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Pettibone, John Mahlon

DECONSTRUCTING THE DECONSTRUCTORS: THE POLITICS OF ANTI­ PHOTOGRAPHIC CRITICISM (A METACRITICAL ANALYSIS)

The Ohio Stale University Ph.D. 1987

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University Microfilms International DECONSTRUCTING THE DECONSTRUCTORS:

THE POLITICS OF ANTI-PHOTOGRAPHIC CRITICISM

(A METACRITICAL ANALYSIS)

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

the Degree Doctor of Philosophy

in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

By

John M. Pettibone, A.B., A.M., M.S.P.A., M.A.

*****

The Ohio State University

Winter, 1987

Dissertation Committee: , , Approved by

Prof. Kenneth Marantz

Prof. Dan Boord US' Prof. Jonathan Green Prof. Kenneth Marantz, Advisor Prof. Clayton Lowe Chairman, Dept, of Art Education Copyright 1986 John M. Pettibone All rights reserved. This dissertation 1s dedicated to Allan Sekula, whose critique of the photographic medium first stimulated my Interest 1n this area of criticism.

11 VITA

May 10, 1930 ...... Born -- Highland Park, Michigan

1952...... Bachelor of Arts, College of Literature, Arts & Sciences University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

1955 ...... Master of Arts, Dept, of Sociology, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

1968-70 ...... Adjunct Faculty, Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio

1970 ...... Master of Science 1n Public Administration, The Ohio State University, Columbus.

1980-82 ...... Fellow 1n Social Policy, The Academy for Contemporary Problems, Columbus, OH.

1981-83 ...... Graduate Teaching Associate, Dept, of Photography 4 Cinema, The Ohio State University, Columbus.

1983 ...... Master of Arts 1n Photography 4 Cinema, The Ohio State University, Columbus.

1984 ...... Graduate Research Associate, Dept, of Photography 4 Cinema, The Ohio State University, Columbus.

111 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

VITA 111

CH. I BACKGROUND OF THE PROBLEM: RATIONALE AND STRUCTURE OF THE STUDY...... 1

CH. II CONCEPTS OF PHOTOGRAPHIC AESTHETICS AND CRITICISM: A SHORT SOCIOCULTURAL HISTORY ...... 9

CH. Ill CRITICISM: THE DECONSTRUCTIVE METHOD ...... 38

CH. IV PHOTOCRITICISM AS THE POLITICS OF THE LITERATI: POSTMODERNISM, POSTSTRUCTURALISM, ROSALIND KRAUSS . . 51

CH. V PHOTOCRITICISM AS THE POLITICS OF ICONOCLASM: THE NEO-PLATONIC CRUSADE OF SUSAN SONTAG ...... 121

CH. VI PHOTOCRITICISM AS THE POLITICS OF CLASS STRUGGLE: THE MARXIAN/FOUCAULTIAN CRITIQUE OF ALLAN SEKULA . . . 151

CH. VII PHOTOCRITICISM AS THE POLITICS OF LEFT LITERATURE: THE RECEPTION OF JONATHAN GREEN'S POPULIST MYTHICISM...... 175

CH. VIII SUGGESTIONS FOR NEW RESEARCH AND CRITICISM: A NEW STRUCTURAL PARADIGM FOR PHOTOGRAPHIC THEORY . . 224

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 281

1 v CHAPTER I :

BACKGROUND OF THE PROBLEM;

RATIONALE AND STRUCTURE OF THE STUDY

Crowding out, usurping, supplanting, 1s what language (criticism, theory) does to experience (art) .... And yet we want 1t. -- Rosalind Krauss

This study will explore the current state of academic photocr1t1c1sm and of the development of photographic theory. It will argue that the present states of these two aspects of the academic scene are potentially damaging to the field of photographic higher education, especially 1n Its current weakened condition.

This study will show the current dominance, 1n the academic arena of criticism, of critical writing which 1s essentially anti- photographic. It will examine the basis of this criticism 1n political and linguistic theory: theory that mandates the political rejection of photography along with the political rejection of the society which produces that photography; theory that reduces photography from the elevated status of a fine art to the denigrated status of mere data for political and/or linguistic analysis; theory that makes the epistemologlcal assumption that meaning Itself can arise only from language, not from vision.

1 2

This study will argue that an essentially hostile base of contemporary academic photocr1t1c1sm cannot logically have any other effect than to discourage the entry, Into photographic academia, of potential students and faculty whose Interest lies 1n celebration of the medium as an art form. At the same time, ant1-photograph1c criticism can only encourage the academic Involvement of students and faculty whose Interest 1s 1n political and theoretical opposition to the field Its e lf and to the society which supports 1t. From this perspective, the present decline 1n Interest 1n art photography programs, as well as the current Ideological conflict within those programs, can be more easily and completely understood.

Finally, this study will suggest that one of the causes <: * the current hegemony of ant1-photograph1c writing 1s a vacuum of accepted

"theory of photography." It will argue that there 1s now an absence of a customarily accepted paradigm, or taxonomy, of photography theory; a lack of a recognized structure of alternative theoretical approaches which can facilitate teaching, research, and criticism; a need for an eclectic theoretical paradigm which can provide an effective counter-claim to the aggressive demands of political and linguistic theories for sole recognition as "the" theory of photography. These demands Inevitably create academic battlegrounds of Ideological warfare, warfare that 1s accompanied by Interpersonal and 1ntraorgan1zat1onal conflict. 3

The problem of ant1-photograph1c criticism and 1t,s consequences are now topics of frequent attention and Intense concern 1n the

Informal, professional circles of photographic academia. However, their mention 1n the professional literature, and on the agenda of professional conferences, 1s nearly unknown; so 1s consideration of the nature of "photographic theory."

These are the problems to *e addressed by this study. In doing so, this study will develop certain responses designed to be helpful

1n understanding and ameliorating them.

This study will provide a metacrltlcal analysis of the contemporary dominance of academic/intellectual photocr1t1c1sm by photographic applications of theory based 1n radical politics and 1n radical linguistics. In these theoretical perspectives, photography

Is reduced to mere data for conceptual analysis, political or linguistic. While such photocrltlcal thinking has, undeniably, at least some validity, such criticism becomes 1n effect anti- photographic: when political theory rejects the whole of contemporary society and culture, and when linguistic theory rejects all claims of the visual arts to meaning and value, photography 1s,

Itself, automatically attacked and rejected along with the society and the arts which generate 1t. Thus, contemporary ant1-photograph1c criticism asserts the supremacy of politics over aesthetics, of criticism over art, of writer over photographer, of language over visual Image. 4

Clearly, such photocr1t1c1sm constitutes an attack upon established academic Interests within photography; 1n effect, 1t 1s also an attack upon the very medium Itself (1n the medium's accepted forms and uses). Predictably, the m ilitant advocacy of such views must be destructive to photographic Institutions that function within the social and academic mainstream; such views are obviously a challenge to th eir social legitimacy, their economic Interests, their a rtis tic values and, perhaps, even to th eir existence.

This study will develop metacrltlcal arguments and theoretical structures useful as analytical and conceptual responses to the anti- photographic criticism and theoretical disorganization outlined above. It 1s hoped and 1nten 3d that these responses will be of future value, both Intellectual and practical, 1n ameliorating the present academic domination of ant1-photograph1c critical writing and the present chaos 1n academic theory of photography.

First, to support the above arguments, this study will provide a short history of the evolution of photographic aesthetics and critic a l concepts. Against this background, the current shibboleths of anti-photographic criticism will be disclosed as neither absolute ethical Imperatives nor permanent aesthetic Inevitabilities. Rather, they will appear as the latest, temporarily dominant Ideological products of ongoing developments 1n cultural history and economic change. 5

Next, there will be a metacritique, a "deconstruction," of the

Internal Ideologies upon which anti-photographic criticism 1s currently based. Such a deconstruction turns the logic of politically generated ant1-photograph1c writing back upon Itself and upon other ant1-photograph1c writing; It provides a Marxian/

Foucaultlan analysis of the seminal anti-photographic writings of

Sontag, Sekula, and the Poststructural1sts: this analysis reveals the presence of an occupationally self-serving politics within the ant1-photograph1c Ideologies and arguments of the various writers.

One such political "deconstruction" of ant1-photograph1c writing

1s t.'iat of politics as class struggle, of a radical politics which unites Hal Foster's "Poststructuralism of Resistance" with Allan

Sekula's Marxist condemnation of "The Traffic 1n Photographs." A second perspective 1s the perpetual struggle of the literary

Intelligentsia for leadership of the proletarian class struggle. A third 1s the classic politics of contention between criticism and art for the hegemonic status of ultimate truth-brlnger and the privilege of professional primacy. A fourth 1s the direct political challenge

(spearheaded by the fleld-theory methodology of synchronlclty advocated by Rosalind Krauss) to the established art-historical method.

As these various modes of anti-photographic critique can be reduced to various arenas of 1deolog1cal/pol1t 1cal contention, so this contention itself can be conceptually united by certain prior 6 understandings of the philosophy of rhetoric. Marx observed that macropol1t1cal Ideology could also be understood as "the language of real life," as the rhetorical expression of occupational struggle 1n the workaday world. Consistent with this Marxian analysis 1s Michel

Foucault's vision of contemporary Western language as a product of pol1t1cal/soc1al Institutions and, quite specifically, as a professionalized "discourse" which serves to create and perpetuate projects of political control expressed 1n professional jurisdictions and jargons. These Marx1an/Foucault1an doctrines of the essentiality of the p o litics of profession and discourse are combined, 1n the politics of contemporary ant1-photograph1c criticism, with what the philosopher Christopher Norris calls the "linguistic turn" -- the transformation of an ultra-Suassurlan linguistic bias (that only through verbal language can human experience be understood and shared) Into a philosophical apotheosis of writing as Origin, as

F irst Principle, Ultimate Value, Theological Source. Denigrating all other sources of knowledge -- Including the historical and the visual

-- the deification of the Bartheslan "text" makes the critical writer

Its high priest, Its sole oracle: Frederick Jameson proclaims the

"death of philosophy" and the withering away of academia, and he

Implies the Inevitable "reconstruction" of "deconstructed" Modernist knowledge as a generic, pol1t1cal/Hngu1st1c/cr1t1cal "theory" which

1s to constitute knowledge 1n Its surviving entirety. 7

In addition to Its focus upor the professional Imperialism

Inherent 1n such claims, the dissertation advocates a return of critical Interest, focus, and approval to the photographic medium and art.

Then, there will be an economic analysis — again, 1n terms of basic Marxian and Foucaultlan concepts — of the real-world operations of academic, political, and Intellectual photocriticism.

This analysis will suggest that the current politicization of academic photocriticism can be effectively and realistically comprehended as the necessary economic strategy of the superstructure of purely political criticism to acquire an ecoromlc base.

Next, this study will suggest a return to a centering of academic and critical Interest 1n the medium Itself. This will be

Illustrated by a defense of the work of Jonathan Green, work valuable as a renaissance cf mythic Structuralism, American populism, and literary Idealism, each one 1n approach to photographic history and criticism underemphasized 1n the past and currently experiencing determined attack by political critics. An appropriate metacrltlcal analysis of this attack will be provided; an analysis designed to contribute constructively to current understandings of the value of

Green's c ritic a l approach.

As Its last major piece of analysis, this study will make suggestions for new research and writing. It will develop a structural paradigm for the conceptual organization and Integration 8 of competing systems of photographic and photography-related theory.

This paradigm will be developed by f ir s t constructing -- from the lite ra ry theory of Roman Jakobson and Northrop Frye -- a new conceptual organization of theories of film and by adapting this schema to still photography 1n the form of Meld-theory diagrams

Inspired by communications theory.

Suggestions will be made for the use of this paradigm 1n returning the Interests of criticism back to the medium, and away from politics/linguistics. The paradigm will Integrate eclectic approaches to photographic Instruction, and will make possible computer-generatlon of lists of explorations of new areas worthy of concern 1n teaching, criticism, and theoretical research. Actual examples of the application of this paradigm 1n the development of new photographic theory, and the development of new photographic curricula, will be Included as validation and Illustration of the recommended theoretical approach. CHAPTER I I

CONCEPTS OF PHOTOGRAPHIC AESTHETICS AND CRITICISM:

A SHORT SOCIOCULTURAL HISTORY

Each epoch not only dreams the next, but while dreaming impels the next toward Its awakening. -- Walter Benjamin

Academic and Intellectual photocr1t1c1sm has shifted away from aesthetics, away from artistic technique and use of materials, and away from metaphorical Interpretation of photography-as-art. This sh ift has taken place 1n two new directions: f ir s t, toward a concern with the dominance of an oppositional p o litics centered 1n Marxist,

Feminist, and Post-Structuralist theoretical views of society and self; second, toward a reflexive concern with criticism Itself, with the professional establishment and advancement of photocr1t1c1sm as an academic and literary profession, and with the occupational politics Involved therein.*

This emerging professionalism Involves transplantation of pol1t1cal/1ntellectual criticism Into the more economically secure and politically protected arena of academia. It also Includes redefining the base of criticism Itself In terms of linguistic and political theory.

9 10

This redefinition moves the focus of criticism away from a consideration of the photograph as artistic, communicative, personal statement to the photograph as cultural text and as political a rtifa c t; from the photograph as original, visual source of knowledge to the photograph as mere data for Hngu1st1c/pol1t1cal analysis; and from the Modernist photograph as extension and mirror of a unique, creative, Individual Self to the Post-Vc-ernlst photograph as evidence of the Self's non-existence.^

This new criticism also emerges as an expression of several actlonlst varieties of "real-world" politics: a visionary Marxist opposition to established capitalism and bourgeois culture,^ a practical Feminist revolt against what 1s perceived as a male- dominated social structure,4 and a professional politics of cr1t1c1sm-as-occupat1on, a banal Realpol1t1k which seeks to reverse the traditional role of the critic as art's servant rather than Its master.5

In order to adequately discuss these developments 1n contemporary photocr1t1c1sm, 1t seems necessary to avoid the fallacy of attempting to deal with them as facts unrelated to their own history. Therefore, I shall begin by outlining the historical evolution of the philosophical and aesthetic Ideas which this new criticism supplants and reacts against. The following section 1s designed to meet this need; 1t Includes a short synoptic analysis of the Romantic, Modernist, and Post-Modernist movements 1n art and in 11

culture In general, of the expressions of these movements 1n

photography, and of the critical notions emerging from these

movements and providing their Intellectual support.

Modernism: The Evolution of Its Cultural and Artistic Traditions

Contemporary photography — photography as we today encounter 1t

1n the mainstream of artistic, commercial, and popular production —

1s essentially Modernist. It has emerged out of the rigorously

Individualistic Romantic traditions of early Modern culture;

traditions which proclaim and privilege the concepts of originality,

uniqueness, creativity, expression, Intention, statement, and

authorship. Arising within the Romantic movements 1n lite ratu re and

the arts, these artistic concepts were cultural expressions of the

p o litical, economic, and social Individual1sms of the rising middle class.

With their valorization of personal freedom and of Individual

1d1osyncracy, the art and criticism of the Romantics were an

Intellectuallzed, aesthetlclzed, and often eroticized symbolic

rebellion against the high culture of late feudalism, with Its Neo-

Classical traditions of Idealized nature and of universalized, depersonalized, mythologized allegories.® (These Neo-Class1c

traditions of art-as-un1versal had been Institutionalized, by the

French Academies of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, via a

stylistic Imitation of classical sculpture -- 1n sculpture, and 1n 12 contemporary painting as well — as a means of legitimating the elite classes of late feudalism by appropriating for these classes the

Iconography of the elites of Greek and Roman antiquity.)?

In the French painting of the early 19th century, Gerlcault and

Delacroix led the Romantics 1n establishing "bold" new styles and themes valorizing the Individualistic culture of the new bourgeoisie.

Subject matter began to turn from classic mythology to more recent history and literature. Interest 1n the human face and form continued, but this was transferred from depersonalized, typical1zed allegory to the personalized, Identifiable Individual; the standardized aesthetics of Academic style were absorbed Into more unrestrained and personally expressive treatments of personality, color, line and form.®

The desired Ideal of a rtis tic achievement changed from the continuous refinement of approved academic style and theme to the creation of Individualistic works expressive of the Romantic notion of Idiosyncratic, personalized "Genius." Into the Romantic "cult of

Genius" Intruded the advance guard of the coming Modernist aesthetic: the new bourgeois Ideals of concrete Individualism and of scientific realism. Thus, Manet's Olympia (1863) has been Identified as the first Modernist painting because of Its moves toward lifelike realism

1n the form of sexual explldtness, Individualized facial features, and non-standard1zed bodily form.® Such Iconic "realism" Ignored the cultural archives of traditional, aristo cratic Neo-Class1c1sm; 1t 13 proceeded from the more contemporary trends of painting Its e lf toward

"bourgeois realism," a newly "realist" — and often overtly political

-- canon that privileged the painting of 1dosyncrat1c Individuals rather than the representation of allegorical symbols 1n generalized human form. And these Individuals were no longer aristocrats only; they were peasants, workmen, bourgeoisie — the classes which supported the power structure of the new urban society.

Appropriately, the portrayal milieu of these Individuals was often the city Itself.1^

These early forms of expressive but realist representation eventually transformed themselves Into Impressionism: a new artistic formalism which took as Its ethos the bourgeois Intere:.': 1n scientific knowledge. This knowledge Included discovery of the principles of human perception, a discovery celebrated 1n early schools of "Modern Art." Art, declared Impressionism, was the study of "seeing," a dictum later to be appropriated by Photography.^

Modernist Photography

Photography, 1n the meantime, was being born. It was emerging

(circa 1839) as an expression, and a cultural product, of the scien tistic rationalism and scien tific experlmental1sm which were providing a technological basis for the Industrial, communicative, and agricultural progress of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Accurate copies of real objects were needed 1n many technical fields, 14 needed In a quantity and precision of detail which the eyes and hands of artistic copyists could not provide.1^

This problem led to the many technical experiments which established the Initial tradition of the medium: realism. In 1796,

Nedgewood experimented with the production 01 silver-salt tracings of botanical specimens but was unable to prevent the Images from fading completely aw ay.1^ In 1826, Niepce took the f ir s t verified silver- salt Image by means of a lens-equipped camera obscura. This Image was permanently fixed 1n a solution of sodium chloride, providing the f i r s t known example of a "photograph" as we now use the term.1^

Niepce's experiments with camera-produced Images had grown out of his experiments with using 11ght-sens1t1ve materials to copy commercial engravings. The commercial applications of Niepce's photographic processes were perceived by Daguerre, an a r tis t and promoter of "Diorama" entertainments. Daguerre took Niepce Into joint partnership, added to Niepce's process a number of refinements, and named their "shared" Invention the Daguerreotype.1**

Daguerre himself wrote of the purpose of this process as "the spontaneous reproduction of the Images of nature received 1n the camera obscura."1** The astronomer Arago, 1n his report to the French

Chamber of Deputies urging the purchase of the Daguerre/Niepce process by the state, characterized 1t as having "unimaginable precision of detail" and as providing minutely accurate records of everything from archeological monuments to the face of the moon.1** 15

Thus began the "realist" tradition of photography, Its first — and still primary — tradition; the basis of Its expansion Into modern documentation, journalism, scientific record-keeping, Indus­ trial and prlntlng-copy-work, family snapshots, portraiture, etc.

From 1839 onward, photography established Its e lf as the technology of usual choice In portraiture and 1n scientific and cultural record-making. Painting, freed from the drudgeries of copyist realism by the Impossibility of competing with photography's quick and accurate "pencil of nature," pursued a new and rebelHously

Individualistic preoccupation with Idosyncracy, experimentation,

Intellectuallsm, and social non-conform1ty.^ In painting, extremist

Individualism reached 1 s apotheosis 1n a socially and conceptually radical avant-gardism which, paradoxically, eventually became conservative; 1t became the received, established ethic of Modernist painting and also, of course, of the Modernist or "creative" or "art" photographic tradition which still heavily Influences the medium and

Its criticism.^

The tradition of photography as a "creative" and avant- garde a rt form may be regarded as the second great Modernist tradition 1n photography. In sum, such photography retains a

Romantic vision of the Individual human being as free agent and free spirit, as creative genius, as consciousness expressing Itself. With

Kant, 1t 1s concerned with the photographic artist as author of unique, original works of art. With psychoanalytic advocates from 16

Freuri to Joel-Peter W1tk1n, 1t sees those works of art as part of the artist's definition of his world and of his own Identity; as expressions of the artists' feelings, Impressions, statements, and

Intentions. With John Dewey, 1t deals with art as personal experience; 1t has faith 1n the personal possibility of meaning,

Interpretation, representation, and Intention. In this tradition of subjectivity, photography 1s "art about the world," "art about the artist," "art about Individualism," and "art about the self."

In Ironic opposition to the Romantic tradition of personal subjectivity 1s a third tradition of Modernist photography: the project of the Enlightenment, the tradition of photography as rat1onal1st/object1v1st 1n philosophy, as scientific/technological 1n focus, and as properly developing according to the rules of Its own, unique, Inner logic.Just as did painting when liberated by photography from the burdens of representational 1sm, Modernist photography became self-reflexive. It became entranced with a scientific analysis of Itself as medium; with the 1dosyncrat1c purity of Its own "photographic" nature, forms, materials, and techniques; with a materialistic focus upon Itself as object, and with a technological fascination with Itself as machine and as process.

These nineteenth and early twentieth century faiths In materialism and science, and 1n the medium's unique Internal logic 1n technology and progress, were expressed 1n the "straight photography" tradition of St1egl1tz and Weston and 1n the "zone system" of Ansel 17

Adams (as well as 1n the more philistine obsessions of the amateur

photographer with his equipment). In this tradition, photography celebrates materialism. As art, 1t becomes "art about technology;"

photographic technology, at last, becomes Its own self-reflexlve

purpose and aesthetic. Even today, magazines such as the aptly-named

Modern Photography s till flourish by expounding this notion of photographic aesthetics as the Modernist aesthetics of materialism and mass production, of photography-as-log1c-as-technology-as-art.

But mass production 1s Its own nemesis; eventually 1t creates conditions demanding new social aesthetics. Mass-product1on depends upon standardization of design, uniformity of process, and economies of scale. As these are achieved — as standardization and operational scale Increase -- production swells and supply exceeds demand. Over­ produced goods pile up unless they can be sold by the a rtific ia l stimulus of mass advertising.

Photography's utilizatio n by these economic processes provided the base of a fourth major tradition of Modernist photography: the

Industrial/commercial tradition 1n which photography creates and popularizes an aesthetic derived from the processes of mass production, mass distribution, and mass consumption. Joined by painting and other graphic arts, photography adapted Its representation to aesthetlclzed Industrial design, and to advertising

imagery. In a tradition led by such masters as Pete Turner and Art

Kane, American commerical photography Incorporated a machine-deslgn 18 aesthetic of clean, simplex geometry that was, 1n turn, absorbed Into a "slick" advertising aesthetic that romanticized and glamorized the produced object. It Imbued that object with connotations of sexuality, power, wealth, status, taste, perfection, and even

Immortality or rebirth; qualities which could all be symbolically acquired by purchase. To sell goods, photography melded the various traditions of Individual aspiration, creative art, progressive technology, mass-productlon, and Individual consumption together Into a common Modernist aesthetic of consumption which may be referred to,

1n Marxist terms, as the "commodity fetish," and, 1n Freudian terms, as the "fetlshlzed commodity." This fet1sh1zat1on erects a social system which embodies, 1n Marx's words, "A definite social relation between men, that assumes, 1n their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between th1ngs."22

Modernist photography rests upon the 19th century philosophical doctrine of logical positivism with Its associated popular belief 1n the Inevitability of social, cultural and material progress through the Institutions of representative democracy, science, technology, Industry, and free enterprise. Underlying these, 1n turn, are the Romantic reinvention of Individual Identity and creativity, Enlightenment faith 1n reason, and the more recent, quas1-1ndustr1al tendencies of society to organize Itse lf around specialization In all forms of production, activity, role, and knowledge.^3 Thus, the Enlightenment Imperatives of humanism and 19 reason turn Inside out: apotheosis of mass Industrial production and massive conspicuous consumption becomes the essential ethic of high

Modernism.

The Postwar Crisis of Modernism: Politics and Society

The years following World War II saw the zenith of high

Modernism, particularly 1n the culture of the United States. In this country, the war Itself was Ideologically understood and fought as a defense of the political rights of the Individual and of democratic forms of government throughout the world (an ethic elegantly expressed 1n Stelchen's photo exhibit "The Family of Man"). The defense of a democratic social pluralism was joined to the defense of high culture 1n the allied opposition to the genocldal Nazi depredations against Jewish and other "non-Aryan" minorities, and to the Nazi destruction of their traditional cultures.

In World War II, as the Axis Powers were overwhelmed by the war machines and m aterials produced by American and Allied factories,

Industrial mass production seemed to prove Itself as both Invincible savior and technological servant of mankind. Like World War I the war Itself was seen (again) as a war to end all wars; the vision of victory held by Americans at that time was of a future of perpetual peace, justice, freedom, and plenty for all. In a world of newly

United Nations, Individuals of all colors and creeds would enjoy the fruits of their own labors, express themselves as they chose, and 20 enjoy the “good life" of self-fulfillment provided by a universal political freedom and a benevolent Industrialism which were, they assumed, to be the final and Inevitable result of human progress. A modern golden age, 1t seemed, was close at hand.

But this was not to be; the Modernist dream of Utopia yielded to the modern reality of c ris is.24 Unanticipated problems were developing In economics, politics, and culture; the "cold war" with the Soviet Union, and the ever-present threat of atomic apocalypse, coincided with disturbing new social, Ideological, and philosophical

Influences. Sartre's Existentialist philosophy, with Its emphasis on personal responsibility and action, Influenced the rejection of conventional materialism by the social revolts of several decades: the Beat Generation of the fifties, the Hippie movement of the sixties,-the ant1-war, ant1-repress1on student revolts of the sixties and seventies, and the Feminist resistances of all those decades.

Industrial democracy had lost Its Idyllic, Utopian mystique. The myth of progress was dying.

Meanwhile, urbanization, suburbanization, and exurbanization continued at a rapid pace. This growth proceeded to wither and destroy the sacred, traditional, rural/sm all town culture of America.

In Its place emerged an urbanized, secularized society dependent on v the media for Interaction and communication, a society described by the sociologist Rlesman as a "lonely crowd" of the alienated and the self-Isolated. 21

This alienated mass of socially, psychologically, and spatially distanced people was spawned, In itially , by the contradictions within human ecology -- the perecelved need for an ever-increasing population to find new living spaces near the centers of production, but away from the congested urban areas with th eir social and environmental decay. Only by joining 1n the productivity of urban

Industrialization, 1t was assumed, could the dream of the good life be made real; but only by moving one's residence away from the spatial center of Industrialization could the fruits of productivity be enjoyed.25

But as suburbanization and exurbanization proceeded, the social milieu of the neighborhood was effectively replaced by the a r tif ic ia l, symbolic environment of television. Exposure to technological Images and Information began to replace contact with living people. Thus, the "Post-Modern," "mass-culture," "Information society" began; Yeats' "great beast" was "slouching toward Bethlehem to be born."

The Wane of Modern Culture; the Origins of Postmodern Culture

World War II had seriously weakened Modernism's faith In the

Inevitability of progress, In the benevolence of Industrialism, and

In the social power of the ethics of human responsibility to established society. The war and Its horrors -- worldwide combat, destruction of cities, genocidal exterminations, national collapses, 22 civil corruptions, and social turmoil — provided severe shocks to traditional beliefs. Throughout Western culture, various philosophical movements expressed the new cynicism and disillusion; these movements also sought new theoretical structures for the understanding of existence and new practical ways of working toward the solution of human problems 1n the world Itself.

Those new philosophies Included Oriental metaphysics and ethics, particularly the 1nner-d1rected contemplatlonlsm of Zen and Taoism.

Also Influential were Sartrean Existentialism , with Its heavy emphasis on Individual self-responsibility and Individual action, and the unlverallzed understandings of human culture and mythology expounded by Lev1-Straus* anthropological Structuralism .^ These new views were accompanied -- both as a separate and self-contained philosophical systems, and as grafted-on extensions of Existentialism and Structuralism — by the politically oppositional and

Intellectually Iconoclastic world-view of Marxism, with its academically Influential philosophy of Dialectical Materialism and

Its practical, class-struggle manifestations 1n Marxist political and

Insurgent movements.^8

Together these philosophical/cultural movements of the Postwar period hastened, rationalized, and validated a partial breakdown of traditional Modernist organizations of formal, specialized knowledge and of Industrialized culture. The use of Industrial mass-productlon and Its ever-1ncreas1ng specialization as master models for all of 23

Western society and culture slowed, and, 1n some areas, began to reverse Itself.^®

This reversal appeared f ir s t 1n Western high culture.

In lite ra tu re , the decline of Modernism saw the breakdown of the aesthetic of Inner logic, of logic unique to each medium. Swept away were the conceptual barriers between traditional forms: prose and poetry, the novel, and journalism. Within thse forms themselves, tight narrative gave way to Existentialist preoccupations with the random, the fragmentary, and the meaningless. Eloquence of style merged Into vernacular speech: 1n an assault on Modernist literary form, the subjective "stream of consciousness" of Joyce's Ulysses and

Finnegan's Wake joined the "new novels" of Alain Robbe-Grlllet, while

Kafka combined pre-Modern1st allegory with an ant1-Modern1st denial of the notion of Inevitable progress and an Existential celebration of death, emptiness, hopelessness, and silence. A new "parallterary" form evolved which blurred the distinctions between creativ ity and criticism, quotations and originality, politics and art: the work of such writers as Michel Foucault or Edward W. Said, for example, 1s not clearly any of these above: nor 1s 1t anything less than a melding of literary criticism, sociology, philosophy, politics, and history.

In film, the French New Wave Introduced a similar rejection of

Modernist narrative form. Godard, 1n particular, experimented with

"parallterary" 1nter-med1a transpositions: Tout Va B1en as Brechtlan 24 drama, Letter to Jane as filmed photocriticism, Breathless as the

"parallterary" transformation of life Into media Image, film Into criticism, criticism Into film.

The postwar scene 1n the plastic visual arts, particularly 1n

New York, became enveloped 1n a chaos of heterogeneity. A rtistic faith 1n Modernist theories of positive, linear progress 1n the history of art was seriously shaken. The Increasingly large scale of production of highly Individualistic works — all designed to compete for contemporary recognition as the "next step 1n art's evolution" -- made the Modernist Idea of orderly progress 1n the arts visibly

Impractical as well as theoretically questionable. Dealers, critics, curators, customers, and artists themselves could ot cope with the chaos of experimentation 1n their minds, let alone 1n their work.

In reaction to this situation, a desperate "Pluralism" became the recognized thrust of critical and artistic thought. Attempts at discriminating critic a l analysis were overwhelmed by the Innovation, quantity, and variety of artistic production. In this new pluralist

"Postmodernism," experimental recombinations of a rt forms were

Investigated and traditional separations between the media were lost: for example, 1n photography, Rauschenberg, Warhol, Samaras, Helneken, and many others combined their photography with painting, prlntmaklng, writing, and sundry other media.

Meanwhile, TV and cinema -- electronic forms of "pop art" — led the way 1n returning popular representation to a concern with the 25 typical, the universal, the allegorical, (All these were ancient a rtis tic Ideals which had preceded Romanticism and Modernism, but had been temporarily displaced and discredited by Modernism's Romantic search for the unique, the personal, the creative.) As mass- rltuallzatlon of Imagined or mythical experience, film genre — the

Western, the Musical, the Gangster Film, the Mystery — arose and led a popular aesthetic return to the neo-classical Ideal of Alexander

Pope: "What oft was thought, but ne'er so well-express't."^1

Television joined 1n with Its own popular sacraments: the soap opera, the game show, the sitcom, the cartoon, and the commercial.

Aided by cinema, TV made "Postmodernism" (defined as redundant, ritualized banal1ty)32 the dominant a rt form of the popular American scene. Television absorbed Into Itself the formerly discrete, specialized arts and media forms called journalism, sports, the movies, the theater, and politics; TV leveled them all together Into new, media-determined, standardized events. Life became "news,"

"news" became entertainment, entertainment became mfis-medla Images; these Images became life Itself -- at least 1n the Poststructurallst/

Postmodernist vision and slogan: "No Reality Beyond Representation."

Postwar Photography and Photocr1t1c1sm: A Philosophical

Metamorphosis 1n the 60's And Beyond

Postwar, "late modern" photography and photocriticism 1n America did not emerge 1n a cultural vacuum. Rather, they evolved as an 26 expression of developments In other areas of culture: particularly the Zen and E x isten tialist movements 1n philosophy. These movements were translated Into the forms and aesthetics of literature, the traditional visual arts, the mass media, generic cultural criticism, and the American p o litics of class and gender. These philosophical movements and th eir cultural concommltants began, 1n turn, as twentieth century Ideological reactions to the materialism and secularization of Industrialized America, and to the heightened

European (and American) disillusionment with traditional values stimulated by the chaos and horror of World War II.

By 1965, traditional Modernist photocr1t1c1sm, based on the

Modern Art Ideals >f Individual statement, creativity and genius, had greatly expanded Its customary Freudian view of the photographic artifact as expressive of Inner, psychological realities. To this

Freudian Insight had been grafted Zen and Taolst meditative traditions with their mystical eplstemology of the outer, physical surface of things as revelatory of Inner, spiritual, and metaphysical realities hidden beneath. The photograph became a visual mantra, Its contemplation or "reading" a new method of meditation, a way of peeling back the "skin" of appearances. This Tao1st/Zen understanding of photography was championed by the c ritic a l organ

Aperture, edited by Minor White, which published and expounded upon the mystical photographic efforts of such artists as Frederick

Sommer, Walter Chappell, and White himself.33 27

Publication of Aperture began 1n 1954 and was dominated, editorially, by the metaphysical orientation of Minor White's photographic criticism and practice. The Influence of this approach reached something of a crescendo with Aperture's publication of a comprehensive collection of Sommer works In 1962.3* This neo*

Oriental philosophy of photographic criticism and practice then began to wane, but 1t continued Its Influence Into the decade of the 1970's

(and still 1s encountered, occasionally, today).

Following the postwar rise of the Influence of Eastern thought upon American photography, there emerged the Immense cultural

Influence of Sartre's new, secular Existentialism. Perhaps transferred Into the photographic practice of Robert Frank by his contacts 1n the Beat movement (such as Jack Kerouc),^ Frank's work reflected, 1n The Americans, the Existential view of existence as an

Infinite series of chance encounters between a randomized, purpose­ less universe and a lonely, Isolated Individual perceiving no existential meaning but meaninglessness, no unity of life experience but 1n personal alienation. Frank's work was published 1n France 1n

1959; 1n 1961 1t received Aperture discussion and support.

The Influence of Existentialism was also apparent 1n photographic production and curatorshlp. It 1s tempting to regard the criticism of Szarkowskl and Wlnogrand as the photographic symptom of a cultural shift from emphasis on a passive, 1nner-d1rected,

Angst-ridden Existentialism (based 1n the religious agony and guilt 28 of Kierkegaard's earlier Christian Existentialism) to the secularized, outer-directed, activist Existentialism of Jean-Paul

Sartre.®® Sartre's works proclaimed the historic lesson of World War

II as being a mandate not only for despair, but also for an Ironic hopefulness engendered by the liberation of man from all responsibility to any power or morality beyond himself. While the nature of Sartrean existence was "No Exit" from direct encounter with a random, purposeless world, there were still real possibilities of converting those very encounters to unique outcomes of positive personal value to the Individual.

These p o ssib ilities became the concern of photography. As

Jonathan Green has observed, from his own experience as a photographer, "The single most pervasive Influence on American vanguard photography [1n the 1960's] was the written and spoken commentary of John Szarkowskl and Gary Wlnogrand.

Szarkowskl legitim ated photography as a new member of the traditional Modern arts,®® He conferred upon Photography the recognition of MOMA: recognition as a unique, artistic, and communicative medium with Its own specific "way of seeing" or perceptual structure, Its own aesthetic of faithful realism, Its own ethic and technique of factual record. This was expressed 1n

Szarkowskl's book The Photographer's Eye, a study which provided a systematic analysis and aesthetlclzatlon of photographic seeing within such structural concepts as time, perspective, Intent, frame, 29 and detail. In this context, photography becomes a fine art by virtue of Its specific aesthetlclzatlon of encounter with these aspects of the world as “found object." This de facto emphasis on encounter 1s, of course, close to an Existentialist approach. It may be said, therefore, that Szarkowskl's view originates 1n Modernism, then transcends Itself, and ends 1n Existentialism.

More central to, more directly grounded 1n, the E x isten tialist imperative was the work of Gary Wlnogrand. Wlnogrand's writings and talks about his own photographic approach, as well as his elegantly successful practice of his own theory, served to demonstrate this.

As the archetypical Sartrean Individual, Wlnogrand assumed personal responsibility for a rtis tic outcomes of his own unprevisualized, unique encounters with an indeterminate and unpredictable world. In these brushes with existential reality, good and 111, alienation and satisfaction, all photographically emerge from the purposeless chance of life Itself. The means of this emergence, of course, 1s the photographer's Indeterminate relationship with his subject matter, his chance to "see how the world looks photographed."^

While Wlnogrand's approach emphasizes a description rich 1n

"Inclusion and comparison," (Jonathan Green's words), these qualities of the Image are unplanned, undirected, unforeseen. In Wlnogrand's eye, and 1n the photographs which Incarnate the seeing of that eye, the theory of photography 1s a doctrine of praxis, a doctrine which honors only the documentation of existential encounter. The content 30

and formal construction of that encounter emergences from life

Itself, from life 1n Its kaleidoscopic variations. Photographic

strategy is simply "being there."

For Wlnogrand and others of the sixties spirit, their often

unknowing, but s till rigorously existential approach Implied a

photographic anti-aesthetic: the Kantian and related concepts of

formal beauty and compositional organization had no place in an art

of random experience. This ant1-aesthet1c seems to have found

expression, not only 1n Wlnogrand's own revelatory documentaries, but

also 1n the widely embraced canon of photography as pure encounter

and the world as found object. This visual presentation was

accomplished In part by an obvious disorganization and spontaneity of content. More specifically, 1t was signaled by the stylistic motif of the black-bordered frame; a frame whose function as ruthless,

random, mechanical selector 1s emphasized 1n Its own heavy outline; a frame whose role as exponent of vignettedchance 1s expressed by that outline's deliberate Irregularity.

With the sharp edge of this new, Existentialist anti-aesthetic, photography cut Itself loose from Its origins 1n Modern Art and from

Its previous nature as an expression of Modernism's cultural, economic, philosophical, and political faith 1n systematlcs, 1n a priori logic, and 1n purposive organization. On the other hand,

Existentialist emphasis on the uniqueness of the encountering Self and Its Individuated world-experlences continued, and Indeed 31 sharpened, the traditional Romantic and Modern faith 1n the Self, 1n

Individual creativity, 1n genius, and 1n the unique as the basis of all art. In these respects, Existentialism raised Modernist philosophy — and photography — to their final zenith. The Post-

Modern denial of Individuality was still to come.

The Post-Modern rejection of uniqueness as an assumed value and as a perceived characteristic of Art and Society seems to have begun

— within the arts and other aspects of culture outside photography

Itself — with Lev1-Straus' Structuralism. Proceeding 1n a direction opposite to Existentialism, this Structuralist analysis of culture returned to a pre-Modern1st, tribal, mythologically-oriented concept of man as non-un1que. However, this assumption of organized pattern within culture and society was not based upon universal 1st1c,

Romantic moral1sms, nor upon the detached, sc1ence-of-s1gns

Structuralism of Suassure and Pierce, nor upon Modernism's logical positivism and mystification of Industrial culture.^ Rather, Lev1-

Straus' mythic Structuralism (with Its adaptations 1n criticism) proceeded from an analysis of modern man, life, and culture as essentially primitive; from an Anthropological and Biological understanding of all human culture as Inherently based 1n binary opposites (these being fundamental, biological processes of the mind) and their timeless societal expressions and language and 1n the

Imaginary narratives of myth. 32

In the narratology of Northrop Frye,41 these narratives, 1n

turn, were built upon a structure of "archetypes,1' of recurring

themes and motifs of person, place, and process grounded 1n the

tim eless, opposing dyads of story and of perceived existence: life

and death, love and hate, desert and garden, home and journey, good and evil; and so on. Such are the literary Structuralists' archetypal elements of narrative, the elements from whose reflected,

remembered Images the human experience of lif e constructs Itse lf; an experience universal 1n thematic structure, transcending time and culture, although particular and parochial 1n situation and mot1f.42

This Structuralist approach has been heavily Influential 1n

c . . • postwar literature. In the mythic theory of literary criticism, and

In the design and critique of film. Entire film genre — the

Western, the Gangster Film, the Film No1r — are often considered to be contemporary, situational dramatizations of archetypal elements

Interacting 1n tim eless, redundant patterns of classic mythology.

Films of these genre are conventionally designed 1n such terms: for

Instance, the "classic" Western must have most of the archetypal elements mentioned above.

The theoretical and c ritic a l analysis of such films has given rise to a recognized Structuralist school of film theory and critique. The classic works of Parker Tyler (Magic and Myth at the

Movies, The Three Faces of Film) and James Monaco (parts of

American Film Now) are Influential examples. Such works are, of 33 course, not heavily original 1n their viewpoint; they are historical descendants of the prior muslngs of Sir James 6. Frazer, Lev1-Straus,

Freud, and Jung. Structuralism's view of contemporary humanity 1s therefore derived from psychiatric and psychological Interpretations of anthropological observations of "patterns of culture." The resulting theoretical notion of mas., society, and a rt as non-un1que, as mythologically structured, provide5 . Inematlc Structuralism with a link backwards to the dominance of allegory 1n pre-Romantic a rt from

Antiquity to the Academics.

It also provides a link forward to the dogmas of ant1-un1queness and ant1-1nd1v1dual1sm central to today's Postmodernist photography, and equally central to Structuralist and Poststructurallst photocriticism. These notions are discussed 1n following chapters devoted to the Postmodern1st/Structural1st/Poststructural1st critical vision and the neo-Structurallsm of Jonathan Green. To these chapters, this brief sociocultural history 1s no more than prologue. 34

FOOTNOTES: CHAPTER II

(1) Jonathan Green, American Photography: A Critical History, 1945 to the Present, (New York, Harry to. Abrams, 1384), cns. 13 rrr ------

(2) For an extended expositions of this situation, see: Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction, (Minneapolis, Univ. M1nn. P ress, 19fc3). See also:

Hal Foster, ed., The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, (Port Townsend, Wash., Bay Press, 1983). See also:

Allan Sekula, Photography Against the Grain: Essays and Photoworks 1973-1983 (Halifax, frress, Nova Scofta Col 1ege of Art & Design, 1984). See also:

Green, supra, (footnote 1). See also:

Suresh Raval, Metacr1t1c1sm, (Athens, Univ. Georgia Press, 1981). See also:

Rosalind Krauss, The Originality of the Avant-Garde, and Other Modernist Myths. (Cambridge, Mass., HIT Press, 1985)

(3) E.g., Sekula, "Dismantling Modernism, Reinventing Documentary (Notes on the Politics of Representation), Against the Grain, supra.

(4) E.g., Alan Sondheim, "Sexuality, Power, Feminism," Exposure 22.2 (Summer 1984). This entire Issue 1s devoted to Feminist photocriticism.

(5) This reversal 1s to be accomplished by discrediting the eplstemologlcal efficacy of the visual Image. E.g., Susan Sontag, On Photography, (New York, Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 1973), and Allan Sekula, "On the Invention of Photographic Meaning," Against the Grain, supra, (footnote 2).

(6) S. Relnach, Apollo: An Illustrated Manual of the History of Art Throughout the Ages, (New York,thas. Scribner s sons, 1910), p. 285.

(7) Ibid., p. 281.

(8) Ibid., p. 305. 35

(9) John Russell, The Meanings of Modern Art: Vol. I, the Secret Revolution (New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1974), p. 7.

(10) Patricia Ma1nard1, "The Political Origins of Modernism," Art Journal, Spring, 1985.

(11) Russell, Meanings, supra, (footnote 9), passim.

(12) Walter Benjamin, "A short history of photography," trans. Stanley Mitchell, Screen (London), Vol. 13, Spring 1972. See also:

Dominique Francis Arago, "Report," (1839), reprinted 1n: Alan Trachtenberg, ed., Classic Essays 1n Photography (New Haven, 1980).

(13) Peter Pollack, The Picture History of Photography, (New York, Harry N. Abrams, 19^, concise ed.), p. 14.

(14) Ibid., p. 16.

(15) Ibid., p. 16-18.

(16) Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre, "Daguerrotype," (1839), reprinted 1n Trachtenberg, Classic Essays (footnote 12), supra.

(17) Arago, "Report," supra, (footnote 12).

(18) For opposing expositions of the social and cultural problematics Involved 1n this representational break, see:

Charles Baudelaire, "The Modern Public and Photography," (1859) 1n Trachtenberg, Classic Essays, (footnote 12), supra.

Lady Elizabeth Eastlake, "Photography," (1857), reprinted 1n Trachtenberg, Classic Essays, (footnote 12), supra.

(19) Relnach, Apollo, (footnote 6), supra, pp. 334-336.

(20) Excellent examples of Modernist criticism are: Green, American Photography, supra, (footnote 1), and:

John Szarkowskl, Looking at Photographs: 100 Pictures from the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, (New Vork, Museum of Modern Art, 19)3), and: 36

John L. Ward, The Criticism of Photography as Art: The Photographs of Jerry Uelsmann, (Ga1nsv11le, Univ.Florida Press, Humanities Monograph no. 32, 1970), and:

A. D. Coleman, Light Readings: A Photography Critic's Writings, 1968-1978 (New York, Oxford Univ. Press, 1979).

(21) Jurgen Habermas, "Modernity — An Incomplete Project," (1980), reprinted 1n Foster, Ant1-Aesthet1c, supra, (footnote 2).

(22) Karl Marx, "The Fetishism of Commodities, II," (from C apital) extracted 1n Maynard Solomon, Marxism and Art: Essays Classic and Contemporary, (Detroit, Wayne State Univ. Press, 1979), p. 40.

(23) A theme of Allan Sekula, which seems perfectly correct. Source: my notes from his courses 1n History of Photography.

(24) Foster, Ant1-Aest.het1c, supra, (footnote 2), p. x111.

(25) From the personal experience of myself, as partlclpant-observer.

(26) Dramatically expounded 1n such Sartrean plays as The Files and No Exit.

(27) Eagleton, Literary Theory, (footnote 2), supra, pp. 103-104.

(28) The academic theorization of Marxism Is combined with class- struggle praxis 1n the work of Allan Sekula, supra, (footnote 2).

(29) Frederick Jameson, "Postmodernism and Consumer Society," 1n Foster, Ant1-Aesthet1c, supra, (footnote 2), p. 112.

(30) Foster, Ant1-Aesthet1c, supra, (footnote 2), p. x.

(31) Quoted 1n Raval, Metacr1t1c1sm, supra, (footnote 2), p. 57.

(32) For mutually opposing analyses of this phenomena, see:

Umberto Eco, "Innovation and Repetition: Between Modern and Post-Modern Aesthetics," Daedalus 114, no. 2, (Fall 1985), and: 37

Jean Baudrlllard, "The Implosion of Meaning 1n the Mediaand the Implosion of the Social In the Masses," 1n Kathleen Woodward, ed., The Myths of Information: Technology and Post1ndustr1al Culture. (Milwaukee, Univ. of Wisconsin Center for 20th Century Studies/Coda Press, 1980.)

(33) Green, American Photoqraphy, supra, (footnote 1), chapters 3 and 4.

(34) Ibid., p. 73.

(35) Ib id ., chapter 5.

(36) Robert Cummlng, "The Literature of Extreme Situations," 1n Morris PhlHpson and Paul G. Gudel, eds., Aesthetlcs Today, (New York, New American Library, revised edition, 1980^

(37) Green, American Photography, supra, (footnote 1), p. 95.

(38) Ibid.

(39) Ibid., p. 99.

(40) Terry Eagleton, "Structuralism and Semiotics," chapter 3 of Literary Theory, supra, (footnote 2).

(41) Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, (Princeton, N.J., Princeton Univ. Press, 195/).

See also the critique of Frye's Structuralism 1n Raval, Metacr1t1c1sm, supra, (footnote 2), pp. 149-152.

(42) Eagleton, "Structuralism and Semiotics," supra, (footnote 40), pp. 103-104. CHAPTER III

CRITICISM: THE DECONSTRUCTIVE METHOD

Deconstruction 1s philosophy of language at Its most self- critical and Nletzschean. -- Christopher Norris

I will suggest 1n Chapter IV of these writings that the

"Postmodern Condition" 1s often theorized as that of society after a contemporary cultural "break."* This, at the base, 1s a change from a 19th century, "Modern" societal organization (which mimes

Industrial specialization and believes 1n Individualism, optimism, and progress), to a "Postmodern" reshaping of cultural patterns

(around the processing of electronic Information and the abandonment of the unitary self 1n favor of mass consciousness). In Its details of reorganization, the new patterns of society and culture exhibit both sameness and difference; which of these qualities 1s definitive or predominant 1s the subject of much theoretical controversy within cultural criticism. However, 1t seems to me the controversy 1s easily resolved by positing a Postmodern sameness of that which was different under Modernism; and a difference, among surviving cultural fragments and discontinuities, of that which Modernism assumed to be the same throughout culture, time, or space.

38 39

The critical movement engaged 1n "understanding" this cultural break and Its consequences (with certain neo-Structural1st exceptions, such as the work of Jonathan Green and Rosalind Krauss) calls Itself Poststructuralism, a chronological reference to Its general rise to popularity and Influence after the decline of the classical Structuralisms (Suassurlan linguistics and the anthropological mythldsm of Lev1-Straus, with their derivatives 1n such schema as the mythic narratology of Northrop Frye).

As a practical method of definition, Post-Structural 1st criticism 1s of course just that (despite the numerous jokes which foreground the tautology of the label). However, 1n addition, reductionist Poststructurallst criticism moves, as Barthes and others have summarized 1t so neatly, from "work" to "text,"^ from the a rtifa c t to the symbol,^ from "meaning" to the conditions of Its production,^ from the Identifiable (present) singularities of the text and Its meaning to the multiplicities of their (absent) possibilities.^

The techniques of such criticism have been lumped together as

"deconstructlon."^ The term serves to nomlnatlvely contrast Its own approach to the "constructionist" method by which Structuralism created or located systems of meaning within quas1-mechan1cal relationships between "parts" of "structures." The term deconstruction, on the other hand (especially as used by Jacques

Derrida and his followers) Implied the proper function of criticism 40 as "demystification" of language, as exposing the "myths" of meaning and structure which Imprison the Inquiries of philosophy, criticism, and the "sciences" within their own hidden. Internal constraints.^

Both Structuralism and Its "Post" share what Christopher Norris has dubbed "The linguistic turn [of mind]," the Suassurlan a priori: definition of representation as Intrinsically Ungual rather than mental; the de facto appropriation of language, Itself, as Its owr*

Origin, First Principle, Cognitive Assurance:

Structuralism starts out with the premise that language 1s so organized as to constitute our only means of access to a shared world of objects and experience .... Reference 1s always dependent on meaning [not vice versa], and meaning with a structured economy of signifying relationships and differences. [8]

(As an example, we can only "see" as discrete entitles those colors for which our language contains a name.) Structuralism 1s therefore a positive science of the structure of signs and of the construction of present meanings.

Derrida's Poststructuralism shifted linguistic and critical concern away from the referent and the work, and from the structural building of "present" meanings to speculations on the "absent,"

Indeterminate possibilities of mean1ng-not-there; from the quasi-

Newtonian systems of structure to the endless, random p o ssib ilities of the Existentialist void. What else could this "mean?" the

Derrldeans asked. What else could have been "written"? What other

"texts" H e just below the surface? Since all meaning 1s Ungual, how do these alternative or absent "texts" reflect the nature of 41 language Itself? Is 1t perhaps true that, since all meaning 1s

Intratextual and Intertextual, that all writing 1s ultimately about

Itself? What might be the conditions which, 1n the end, determine our Inability to decide these questions? Thus, as Said has said, the essence of Derrldean deconstruction 1s Its "undecldablHty;" Its

Ideas are anti-concepts, Its ultimate poss1b1lt1es of "production" are no more than "supplements" to existing "texts.

It might be put thus: every written text (with Its constitutive cultural texts) becomes a performance 1n the theatre of the absurd,10 a performance wherein the "reality" of present significance blurs and alternates with the "unreality" of the absent, possible alternatives. The Derrldean view of Structuralism follows from this: structure 1s an Illusion, an alternative possibility, a spatial metaphor which pretends unsuccessfully to be an operative concept or "real" description.H Though the Derrldeans agree with the Structuralists that language rules thought, the metaphor of language's reign posited by Structuralism — language as a rational and constitutional monarch -- 1s replaced, by the Derrldeans, with a metaphor of writing as King Lear, lost on the plains of uncertalnty- as-madness.

Example: In a classic piece of quas1-Derr1dean deconstruction,

Barthes begins his "Death of the Author" with this paragraph:

In his story Sarraslne Balzac, describing a castrate disguised as a woman, writes the following sentence: This was woman herself, with her sudden fears, her Irrational whims, her Instinctive worries, her Impetuous boldness, her 42

fusslngs, and her delicious sensibility." Who 1s speaking thus? Is 1t the hero of the story bent on remaining Ignorant of the castrate beneath the woman? Is 1t Balzac the author professing "literary" Ideas on femininity? Is 1t universal wisdom? Romantic psychology?

Refusing all answers to his own questions, and Ignoring the obvious possibilities of other, more Feminist readings and objections, Barthes shunts aside these rhetorical questions as he posits the "Death of the Author":

We shall never know, for the good reason that writing Is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin. Writing 1s that neutral, composite, oblique space where the object slips away, the negative where all Identity slips away, starting with the Identity of the body writing.

Another mode of deconstruction 1s that of Michel Foucault. This mode differs greatly from that of Derrida, though Foucault's approach shares the "linguistic turn" of mind 1n which all meaning Inheres 1n the text. It shares also the conviction that "meaning" lies beneath the surface and that meaning needs, 1n archeological simile, to be excavated by criticism.

However, Foucault makes what amounts, 1n my view, to partial return to the Structuralist fold. His deconstructlve method centers on the determining Influence of political/cultural Institutions and power 1n the Inevitable establishment of "discourses," or specialized language systems which define and carry out the control and separation of society's members 1n systems of social subjugation.1^

The appetite or will to exercise dominant control 1n society and history has also discovered a way to clothe, disguise, rarefy, and wrap Itself systematically 1n the language of 43

truth, discipline, rationality, utilitarian value, and knowledge. This language, In Its naturalness, authority, professionalism, assertiveness, anti-theoretical directness, Is what Foucault has called discourse. — Edward W. Said

This systematic subjugation seems, 1n Foucault's view, to dominate the rationality and purpose of Modern discourse, thus, to almost constitute the real project of the Enlightenment. He describes — as a model of society Itself -- the "panoptic" prison 1n which central surveillance 1s exercised over all Inmates. Here, a penal "discourse" or jargon functions to assign prisoners to, and create categories 1n, every aspect of the organization's function.

Crime and punishment, sanity and madness, conformity and deviation are each "created" by the discourse Its e lf; without the meanlng- structure of the discourse all social behavior would be effectively value-neutral.The duty of criticism 1s therefore — 1n the

Foucaultlan view — to expose the details of the domlnatlve project of Modern professional knowledge; to mount an analytical counter­ attack — anarchic, contentious and quas1-pol1t1ca1 — against the hidden, Invisible mediation and enforcement of exploitative power by modern professions (the sources of power-as-d1scourse) and their jurisdictions of specialized knowledge.!4 (Foucaultlan deconstruction Is often the tack taken by Allan Sekula 1n his photocr1t1c1sm; an analysis of which appears 1n a following chapter.)

However, similarities and differences aside, both Derrldean and

Foucaultlan deconstruction are vulnerable to their own deconstruction 44

1n each other's logical terms: vulnerable, that 1s to mutual metacr1t1c1sm. It may accurately be said that Derrldean deconstruction (from a Foucaultlan perspective) becomes lost 1n the text and 1s socially/politically Irrelevant; the opposing Derrldean

Insight might be that Foucault's work must remain ultim ately unaware of Its own paradoxes, Its own mystifications and reifications, Its own slippery logical and linguistic foundations. Both claims are accurate.

Neither critique -- 1n the form of either Its own methodology, or Its objections to the other -- can completely survive metacrltlcal logic: Derrldean descent Into the abyss of ambiguity cannot be absolute; 1f language has no meaning, that very proposition could >. t be comprehensibly explained. And Foucaultlan reduction of language to professional discourses which enforce social power and subjugation cannot be an absolute principal, else Foucaultlan analysis Itself must be, 1n some sense, equally derivative and corrupt. These caveats to the total, doctrinaire acceptance of both schools of powerful critical discourse are, 1n a sense, reducible to more conventional terms: Derrida's to mysticism, Foucault's to mystique.

Therefore, In the end, we may be persuaded that both discourses remain partially subject to that most despised category of philosophical Origin, common sense,^ as well as to that most suspect of phllsophlcal motives, the Nletzschean w1ll-to-power. 45

In addition to the two modes of deconstruction named after

Derrida and Foucault, there are others. The subjugation of arguments to the test of their own logic has become another respected mode of deconstruction, one advocated particularly by Paul de Han.Indeed, this work of mine, Deconstructing the Deconstructors, 1s a continuing example of such method, as well as an Instance of political deconstruction of the work of various photocritics 1n a sort of

Foucaultlan variant of Marxist Ideological analysis.

Reading on, 1t will become apparent --If not already so -- that the metacrltlcal logic of this work 1s, 1n part, an Implementation of De Man's Imperative by the turning of Allan Sekula's logic upon his own work. Sekula's emphasis Includes a Marxian analysis of

Ideology from various Marxist postions, operative 1n a setting of

Foucaultlan emphasis on the Intrusive determinism of social power on professional discourses.

Deconstructing contemporary ant1-photograph1c criticism 1n these terms will reveal, 1n Its agons of Ideological rhetoric, the alternative text of petty-bourgeois occupational strivings, the discursive Imperialism of criticism Itself. The varieties of that

Imperialism are the concern of the chapters which follow.

However, purists of one "deconstructlve" school or another may object that analyzing political rhetoric 1n Its own terms 1s not

"true, linguistic deconstruction;" that such analysis simply reinvents hermeneutics, which Susan Sontag tried to exorcise 1n 46

Against Interpretation, the essay sometimes credited with stimulating the entire, contemporary critical Interest 1n the relationship of photography to writing.

Be that as 1t may, "thematic analysis" as political

"deconstruction" 1s the technique applied by most radical criticism today. And -- as Christopher Norris points out at length -- any kind of deconstruction rests on a "theme." No apologies are therefore needed here.1^

One of the Intellectually finest, and emotionally most touching, examples of such deconstructlve metacr1t1c1sm might be the confessions of Jean-Paul Sartre 1n The Words, his late-1n-Hfe autobiography. In Its entirety, The '^rds serves as a skeptical arqumentum ad homlnem against his accumulated life's work, his great philosophical system of secular Existentialism. Essentially deconstructing his own earlier writing 1n terms of Its own anti­ clerical politics, Sartre wrote:

Religion . . . served as a model; . . . removed from Catholicism, the sacred was deposited 1n belles-lettres and the penman appeared, an ersatz of the Christian that I was unable to be: his sole concern was salvation; the only purpose of his sojourn here below was that he merit posthumous bliss [fame] by enduring ordeals 1n worthy fashion . . . I thought I was devoting myself to literature, whereas I was actually taking Holy Orders . . . That was the origin of the lucid blindness from which I suffered for thirty years. . . .

But the other one remained, the Invisible One, the Holy Ghost, . . . he had In s ta lle d him self 1n the back of my head 1n the doctored notions which I used 1n my effo rt to understand, to situate, and to justify myself. . . . to write was to ask Death and my masked Religion to preserve 47

my life from Chance. . . . As a m ilitant, I wanted to save myself by works; . . . and, what was most Important, I confused things with their names: that amounts to believing. . . .

I was a prisoner of . . . obvious contradiction, but I did not see 11, I saw the world through 1t. Fake to the marrow of my bones and hoodwinked, I joyfully wrote about our unhappy state. . . . I was happy.

I have changed. . . . I came to think systematically against myself, to the extent of measuring the obvious truth of an Idea by the displeasure 1t caused me. [18]

Finally, there 1s another perspective on the varieties of deconstruction which seems appropriate here, speculative though 1t

1s. It seems to me that such thematic deconstruction as the above self-analysis of Sartre 1s a heavily right-brain activity, proceeding as 1t does from the microdata of words to the macroanalysis of metaphoric sim ilarity between such apparently unrelated opposites as literature and holy orders, or death and chance. Such analysis starts with particularities and ends at generalities; 1t substitutes

Insight for research, Intuition for the use of the dictionary.

Foucaultlan deconstruction might be understood as similarly right-brain 1n Its transformation of language Into synthetic expressions of social power and the rhetoric of social control.

However, Foucaultlan analysis 1s much more centered on Indeterminism

-- at least when 1t ceases to deal with the Institutional origins of politicized meaning — than the thematic. Even further towards

Indeterminism 1s the extreme reductlonlsm of Derrldean analysis, type of critique which can show that even the most grammatically organized 48 and phonetically musical prose can sometimes show no determinate meaning beyond Its own structure. Such prose may be considered preponderately left-brain; to be structure without right-brain context.

Here 1s an example of "extreme, worst-case, left-braln- proposltlonal style" cited by the rhetorician W. Ross Wlnterowd:

The subterfuge and the mistaken planned substitutions for that demanded American action can produce nothing but the general results of negative contention and the Impractical results of misplacements, of mistaken purpose and unrighteous position; the Impractical serviceabilities of unnecessary contradictions. For answers to this dilemma, consult Webster. [19]

This Is the writing of a schizophrenic. Interestingly, 1t seems to ei 1 with the sudden, Derrldean recognition that uncertain meaning is Its most Important characteristic. 49

FOOTNOTES: CHAPTER III

(1) Hal Foster, ed., Preface to: The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, (Port Townsend, Washington, Bay Press, 1983), pp. x111-x1v. These pages contain the beginning of an overview of the notion of cultural "break" as definitive of Postmodernism.

(2) Roland Barthes, trans. Stephen Heath, "From Work to Text," Imaqe-Mus1c-Text, (New York, H111 & Wanq, 1977), pp. 155- IP?

(3) Jean Baudrlllard, "The Precession of Simulacra," Art & Text, no. 11 (Sept. 1983), pp. 3-47, reprint, Brian Wal11s, ed., Art After Modernism, (Boston, Godlve, 1n conjunction with New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1984), pp. 253-282.

(4) Terry Eagleton, LIterary Theory: An Introduction, (Minneapolis, Univ. M1nn. IVess, 1383), and his other works.

(5) Edw. W. Said, "The Problem of Textual 1ty: Two Exemplary Positions," Critical Inquiry vol. 4, no. 4 (Summer, 1978), reprint, 1n Morris Ph1l1pson & Paul J. Gudel, eds., Aesthetics Today, rev. ed. (New York, New Am. L1b., 1980), pp. 87-134'. ------

This essay by Said 1s an authoritative comparison of the basic logic of two systems of deconstructlve thought: those of Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault.

(6) Idem.

(7) Jacques Derrida, "Structure, Sign, and Play 1n the Discourse of the Human Sciences," Writing and Difference, (Chicago, Univ. Chicago Press, l9?8), pp. 2)8-293. See also:

Christopher Norris, The Deconstructlve Turn: essays In the rhetoric of philosophy, (New York, Metheun, 1984), p. 19 and ch. 7.

Eagleton, Literary Theory, supra, ch. 4, "Poststructuralism," pp. 127-150.

(8) Norris, Deconstructlve Turn, (footnote 7), supra, p. 156.

(9) Said, Textual1ty, supra, (footnote 5), passim. 50

10) Ibid., p. 99 ff.

11) Norris, Deconstructlve Turn, supra, (footnote 7), pp. 148-149.

12) Said, Textual1ty, supra, (footnote 5), pp. 123-129.

13) Michael Foucault, trans. Alan Sheridan, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, (New York, Pantheon, 1977), esp. Ch. 3, "Panopt1c1sm."

14) Said, Textual1ty, supra, (footnote 5), p. 129.

15) Suresh Raval, Metacr1t1c1sm, (Athens, Univ. of Georqla Press, 1981), P.T37:

16) Paul de Man, “Criticism and Crisis," from Blindness and Insight: Essays In the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism, 1971.

17) Norris, "Methodological postscript: deconstruction vs. Interpretation?" 1n Deconstructlve Turn, supra, (footnote 7), pp. 163-173.

18) Jean-Paul Sartre, The Words, trans. Bernard Frechtman, (Greenwich, Conn., Fawcett, 1964), pp. 156-158.

19) Jeremy Campbell, Grammatical Man: Information, Entropy, Language, Life (New York, Simon & Shuster, 1982), p. 252. CHAPTER IV

PHOTOCRITICISM AS THE POLITICS OF THE LITERATI:

POSTMODERNISM, POSTSTRUCTURALISM, ROSALIND KRAUSS

Nothing cultural escapes writing -- everything 1s modeled on the structure of language and Its Inscription. -- Rosalind Krauss

Conceptual Introduction

The varieties of criticism which dominated literary speculations on visual art after World War II had their roots 1n the specific, grand systems of philosophy which dominated the Intellectual life of their era. These systems -- Liberalism, Logical Positivism, Existen­ tialism, and Structuralism -- are now, at this writing, Influential within Poststructurallst criticism only as touchstones of anathema, as notions to be reacted against. The new, Poststructurallst criti­ cism finds Its own Inspiration externally: 1n literary theory, 1n applied-theoretical notions, and 1n doctrines of contemporary poli­ tics. These sources of theoretical thought have been appropriated by

Poststructurallst criticism and have been synthesized Into an ela­ borate new system of philosophy and politics, a system Incorporating various new visions of social reality and new political advocacies.

Major themes 1n this emerging soc1al/pol1t1cal/cr1t1cal Ideology are

51 52 discussed below. (In the sections of this chapter which serve as conceptual overview and Introduction, references will be deferred to the more specific sectlohs and chapters which follow.)

The Postmodern Extinction of the Individual

Chapter II developed the Idea that Existentialism and

Structuralism provided, separately, post-war transitions from traditional Romantic and Modernist culture to the masslfled, media- based, Informational1zed culture of the present.

Existentialism brought the wave of Individualism to Its crest 1n the notion of total self-respons1b1Hty (within, of course, the constraining limits of chance) for the 1nd1v1c al person's encounters with the universe. On the other hand, Existentialist thought rejected the old notions of a tendency toward mechanistic order throughout the universe; an order finding expression 1n systems of predictable morality, Industrial and scientific progress, and social organization. In Existentialism, Modernist man preserved the psychological structure of his Individuated Self, but found the accustomed, external structures -- moral, religious, cosmological -- replaced by the Indeterminate operations of a random universe.

Structuralism reversed this understanding: first, 1t destroyed the psychological, unitary Self of Modernist man, leaving him no personal

Identity beyond that of biological organism and that of civilized savage; second, under the depersonalizing doctrines of Lev1-Straus' 53 anthropological Structuralism, man became universally subject to the

Internally structured order of his primitive, "universal" patterns of mind and culture rather than to the cosmic whims of Existentialist

"chance".

But neither Existentialism nor Structuralism was fated to permanently prevail. Soon, the Intricate Intellectual combat between postwar critical philosophies became much more complicated. In the nineteen sixties and seventies, a vestigial eighteenth century

Romanticism, allied with a dominant nineteenth and twentieth century

Modernism, held back the postwar power of Sartre's Existentialism , on the one hand, and the newly dominant Structuralism of Lev1-Straus, on the other. In the decades of the nineteen-seventies and eighties, all these battles become moot: all these traditional philosophical systems were to be replaced, or at least dominated 1n the arena of

Intellectual criticism, by four new (but related) world-views:

Marxism, Feminism, Lacanlan psychoanalysis, and Poststructural1sm.

Poststructuralism

The term Itself 1s now misleading. Less so 1n the beginning, 1t was originally related to Derrida's nihilistic attack on the classic

Structuralisms of Suassure and Levl-Straus. This attack was theological 1n the linguistics of "deconstruction," a doctrinal attempt to locate meaning reductlvely b> taking texts apart, rather than constructing meaning from the relationships between the parts of 54 an attributed Internal structure. However, as pointed out by Yvette

Brio 1n her Profane Mythology: The Savage M1nd of the Cinema (1982),

this new Poststructurallsm does not actually abandon conceptual

structure. Rather, It employs Derrida to demolish the existing

structure; then, like Aladdin of the Lamps, 1t exchanges new for old.

Poststructurallsm, 1n non-Derr1dean variants, substitutes a new

social and cultural framework, based on the effects of mass communication, for all the structures of past Intellectual theory: for Structuralism's primitive culture, for Existentialism's universe of random chance, for Romanticism's Ideal of society as a conglomerate of separate, unique Individuals, and for Modernism's

Industrial mas -production, social uniformity, and mechanistic assumption of Inevitable progress.

Poststructurallsm raises a new denial of the existence of the psychologically Individuated Self and Its Romantic, Freudian, and

Modernist expressions 1n the notions of Genius, Creativity, and

Uniqueness. Under Poststructurallst dogma, Art and the Individual have lost their traditional Identities. Now, they no longer exist as valid concepts; both are reduced to "simulacra," to manifestations of mass stereotypes, cop1es-w1thout-or1g1nals. Now, "art" 1s revealed as never new, as "brlcolage," the act of scavenging for usable shards

1n the "junk heaps" of decaying traditional culture. Now, a rtis tic themes and Inspirations pretend to be new, but never are: even

Irving Penn's photographic panoramas made with an antique, 55 large-format banquet camera are rejected (on Poststructurallst grounds, by Rosalind Krauss) as mere Imitations of the contemporary magazine's two-page-spread.

Under Poststructurallst doctrine, the Individuated, personal

Self as a separate product of a unique personal history and a

Freudian, step-by-step, biologically sequenced, unique, personal development 1s also denied; the Individual's self-concept 1s now constituted only of simulacra produced by a quas1-Lancan1an process, the mirror-imaging of the mass culture of his 1nformat1on-soc1ety milieu.

There 1s no longer such a thing as photography, there 1s only

Sherrie Levine's re-photography of classic existing Images, presenting them as her "own." Currently, there 1s no such thing as a portraiture; rather, there 1s the "non-portrait" of the "non-self", a concept located by P oststructurallst c ritic s In work such as Cindy

Sherman's presentations of herself 1n stereotyped media roles which pre-empt all other sources of psychological Identity and all other forms of psychological existence.

Post-Structuralist photocriticism regards such work as that of

Cindy Sherman and Sherrie Levine as truly Post-Modernist 1n that 1t denies "all reality beyond representation." Most specifically,

Poststructurallst criticism privileges those forms of representation which emerge as the stereotypes of the "Information society" of mass 56 media which, In that vision, to tally replaces the "modern" society based upon Individualistic culture and Industrial mass-productlon.

In the new society there are no persons and no things, only

Images, only "simulacra." Reflecting each other totally and synchronistically, these 1mages-w1thout-or1g1nals constitute a society whose models of organization no longer Include the random universe, the savage tribe, the Industrial factory, or the open society of Idiosyncratic Individuals. Rather, 1t 1s a new, closed culture sealed within a self-contained, synchronistic hall of mirrors, a society populated only by reflected Images. (Ironically,

Western criticism thus adopts, as a governing eplstemology, the

Buddhist cosmological vision of ultimate reality: a palace of sparkling jewels, each jewel Infinitely large and Infinitely small, each jewel reflecting, containing, and contained 1n, every other.)

The Society of the Simulacrum

As the endless Modernist cycle of production, distribution, and consumption enlarges Its scale, multiplies Its complexity, and accelerates Its speed, Its most c ritic a l, enabling component 1s transformed from a flow of material to a flow of Information. As the capacity, efficiency and scale of production Increases, the stimulation, coordination, and control of production, distribution, and consumption requires an exponentiating Increase 1n communications. Communications, 1n turn, requires ever more 57

Information; then, the Increase 1n need for Information requires continuous efforts toward standardization, minimalIzatlon, and speed

— computers, word processors, and TV newscasters go faster and faster; the newspaper receives Its copy Instantly, by orbiting sa te llite .

The mass media then emerge, collectively, as the culturally definitive Institution of society: the "medium becomes the message," and the message becomes a new, standardized culture of redundant commercial and media Images. Computers, television, radio, the press, photography, and the movies provide a new, ersatz, but accepted and universalized reality. The Romantic/Modernist society of Individualism, production, and creative art withers away. In Its place arises the post-industrial, "Post-Modernist," "Information society" of mass1f1cat1on, communication, and standarlzed, redundant

Information. Individual entrepreneurship disappears behind the corporate Image, objects dissolve Into data, the phenomenal world slips away and 1s replaced by stereotyped communicative Images. (It

Is tempting to speculate that even Philosophy Itself 1s transformed

Into technological metaphor: television becomes Reality, Information becomes the Good, the computer reveals Truth, and media advertising defines Beauty.) To the extent that all this occurs, there 1s, 1n fact, "no reality beyond representation."

Postmodernist photography and Its critical corollaries 1n

Poststructurallsm have emerged as a recognition and expression of 58 these conditions and of an Intense artistic and social concern with them. They proclaim the media's Imaging of persons while they deny the possibility of personalization of Images. They focus upon redundant similarities and reject unique differences; they discard the loglcal/postlvlst notion of history as an Inevitable, progressive evolution of discrete forms changing only for the better. They recognize systems but not personalities, macro-events but not micro­ selves. They proclaim the breakdown of specialization and Its replacement with a new, and omnivorous, medla-syncresls. They replace 1d1osyncracy with standardization, consciousness with communication, statement with pastiche, artifact with performance,

Intention with emergence, mean1n_ with discourse.

History disappears; there now exists only a rootless, homogeneous present, a serialized "now" which 1s wholly transformed each time we "change the channel." Authorship 1n art 1s replaced by a process of auto determined, Impersonal emergences of appearances out of systems: nobody "creates" a novel, a photograph, a painting, film or a TV show; they simply erupt from the media. And 1n the erupting, they display no cause, no Identity; like clouds 1n the sky, they simply "are;" and they "are" at the same time, and 1n essentially the same forms, the same simulacra. Past, present, and future disappear; like particles emitted from a sub-atom1c explosion, things now exist only In relation to each other, anti they exist only synchronistically. 59

In the Poststructurallst view, exploration of the psychological

"self" stops, but Narcissism becomes total: we now recognize ourselves only 1n our Image. There Is no longer an a rt which

Imitates life; now life -- and art -- are absorbed Into the meola.

The automatic, redundant, empty nature of the Image Is emphasized by

Andy Warhol's film "Empire State Building;" his photographic

"Celebrity Portraits" disclose the new value of the Individual as

Inherent only In his media Image. The uniquely Individual

"Immaculate Conception" of the historic Madonna converts Into the universalized promiscuity of superstar Madonna, the "Boy Toy." With

Cindy Sherman and Eileen Cowin, we document our own redundancy and allege our own Individual non-existence. With Susan Sontag, we eschew artistic statement and declare ourselves Against

Interpretation. There 1s nothing new to say and nothing new to

Interpret; all our artistic statements and all our critical

Interpretations are now redundant. They are naught but simulacra, empty copies salvaged from the junk-heaps of decaying capitalist culture by the process of trash-picking, or brlcolage. They are totally un-or1g1nal, reflected reflections having no author, no origin, no beginning, no end.

They are — as Starenko said of criticism -- Interminable. 60

The Politics of Alienation

Like Postmodernist photography* today's high criticism 1s

connected Intimately with what might be called the politics of the

alienated Intellectual. It 1s a crltlcsm which thinks and writes 1n

the "discourses of the Other" — the discourses of the unempowered.

There 1s also a Foucaultlan discourse, an occasslonally megalomanlc

linguistic analysis which sees all Images as expressions of power

relationships Intrinsic 1n the organization of society. Finally,

there 1s the discourse of a Lacanlan, "psychoanalytic" theory of

social Identity which, with Marxism, denies the "bourgeois myth of

the Individual" and the Freudian theory of Internally-sequenced

ersonallty development 1n favor of a social theory of personality

formation 1n which the "personality" 1s not "personal," 1n which the

"Self" 1s only an 1nteror1zat1on of the "m1rror-1mage" "Other."

Marxist criticism 1s heavily Influential in the pages of

October, Exposure, and Afterimage. Its major contemporary champion

1s Allan Sekula, whose essays have appeared both 1n journals and 1n book form. Sekula's work seems to be the most prolific, Intelligent,

learned, and profound — as well as the most consequentially radical

-- political criticism of culture being published today; this judgement would apply to non-Marxist as well as Marxist critique.

His work Is dealt with In a separate chapter.

Feminist photocr1t1c1sm centers heavily 1n Exposure, though 1t

1s also strong 1n Afterimage and, to some extent, October. Eminent 61

Feminist photo-cr1t1cs Include Catherine Lord, Sally Stein, Abigail

Solomon-Godeau, Barbara De Genevieve, and others. (Feminist criticism, being politically straightforward and self-revelatory, needs little metacrltlcal analysis and 1s not dealt with 1n this w ritin g .)

Thus does the alienated politics of contemporary photocr1t1c1sm absorb the "real-world" politics of class and gender, the rhetoric of global Ideologies, and the politicized Internal tensions of bourgeois capitalism.

In closing this section on "the politics of alienation," a brief consideration of these Internal tensions. There 1s no question that a large proportion of the women 1n Western capitalist society, living as they do 1n a period of transition from a traditional, male- dominated, family-centered rural and Industrial culture to a post- industrial culture of Individual liberation, are still heavily exploited and underprivileged.

It 1s also true that capitalism, 1f "unfettered," 1s Inevitably the cause of much poverty, social disorganization, and human suffering. This 1s true because capitalism Inherently expands and contracts 1n cycles of business activity; these cycles result 1n the laying off and re-h1r1ng of multitudes of workers; this laying off and re-h1r1ng can take place only from an existing, continuing pool of unemployed or underemployed workers. Such a pool tends to form

Itself from certain disadvantaged groups such as blacks and women; 62

these groups therefore suffer the continuing penalties of cyclical

unemployment: poverty, educational disruption, social disorganiza­

tion of the family, crime, etc.. The Ineluctable nature of this process, under pure capitalism, seems Incontestable; the Marxists are obviously correct 1n regarding this process as determinate historical fact.

However, the notion that the direct experience of social or economic disadvantage Is a proximate course of the radicalized

(Marx1st-Fem1n1st) political directions of contemporary photo- cr1t1c1sm 1s not an Idea which I am able to defend.

Rather, I consider the problematic of radical photocriticism to be that of the alienated Intellectual: a class common, at present, throughout all the world's literate cultures, and backwards 1n time throughout their histories. I see no reason to doubt the dynamic similarities of the behavior of such beings, from, for Instance,

Socrates to Sekula, Lao Tzu to Sakharov. Each of these have produced critiques of their own cultural environments which have great validity; however, I would not care to defend the Idea that all or any of these great personages may have been psychologically motivated by ethical dedication to abstract truth rather than by the concrete anger of personal alienation. 63

The Politics of Cr1t1c1sm-as-Profess1on;

The Origins of Theory In Linguistics

In contemporary photocriticism, the politics of professionalism

find convenient bases 1n linguistic theory. Instrumentally

Interpreted, linguistics can be useful 1n alleging, as Jonathan Green

has noted, the "superiority of the literary artist over the visual one" and the reduction of photography to "only a language experiment." Thus, 1n the relationship between art and criticism, criticism now appropriates the exquisite professionalism, superior status, and functional dominance formerly reserved for art. No longer does criticism play the fool and art the king; now, criticism plays ph1losopher-k1ng who regards art as no more than foolish object, fit only for wise analytical pondering.

Criticism no longer assumes the subordinate role of mere commentator upon superior visual arts; 1t currently presents Itself as the primary mode of artistic (Interpretive) knowledge. It privileges Itself with the claim that the arts 1t critiques are no more than raw data — without Intrinsic or Important meaning of their own — for the verbal/intellectual analysis of criticism. It 1s now

"writing," and not "seeing," which 1s "believing." As authorship and originality 1n art are denied, the Modernist separation of media collapses, and only that a rt 1s privileged which — like the self- portraits of Cindy Sherman --1 s Itself a visual expression of 64 concepts espoused by contemporary critical writing. Now, there 1s no

Art but Criticism.

And there 1s no Criticism but Theory. Criticism now rests on a generic bed of "critical theory" that rejects all previous,

"outworn" theoretical specializations: philosophy, psychiatry, physics, social science, and all other Modernist taxonomies of knowledge are declared Invalid. Now, there 1s only one method of applying "theory;" a generic, over-arching, "critical deconstruction."

Poststructurallsm has applied these Hngu1st1c-contextual1st notions to analysis of the various arts and has supplied the

"contexts" for such analysis from the concepts of political criticism . With Marx, Lacan, Krauss, Foucault, Benjamin, Barthes,

Said, Lev1-Straus, and Sekula, contemporary criticism reduces capitalist civilization and culture to common textual denominators: economic exploitation, power, linguistic rules, dialectical contradictions, and metaphors of commodity fetish. Thus, to the

Poststructurallst slogan "No Reality Beyond Representation" 1s added the Marxist, assumption "No Representation Beyond Politics."

Logically and chronologically, this melange of Poststructurallst approaches has Its positive creed, the restrictio n of meaning to language, 1n Suassurlan Structuralism, Its negative methodology's origins 1n the linguistic "deconstructionism" of Jacques L/err1da; other linguistic, political, and cultural concepts have been added along the way. These various notions have coalesced Into a diverse 65

"Poststructurallst" criticism admitting of various emphases and

Intentions: political, cultural, linguistic, theoretical and practical. However, they are bound together by their common emphasis on the "deconstruction," (read re-1nterpret1on 1n terms of new structures) of the old, accepted structures of art, language and culture.

Linguistics: Determinism and Indeterminism

It 1s therefore appropriate, at this point, to keep 1n mind the essence of each of the linguistic theories which Inform Poststructur­ allsm. To do this, I will employ a didactic and analytical device used by theoretical Sociologists. This requires reducing complex concepts to "Ideal types" differing from and related to each other 1n exaggeratedly rudimentary, but elegantly clear-cut ways. While such a process facilitates analysis at the cost of oversimplifying Ideas and facts, 1t 1s extremely useful 1n making sense of otherwise obfustlcated situations. Such a technique may be especially useful

1n dealing with an area of theory, such as linguistics, which 1s often regarded as an Inaccessible labyrinth. (More detailed, referenced exposition has been made 1n Chapter III.)

I will therefore present, below, what I would offer as "Ideal types" of linguistic theory presently Influential 1n photocriticism.

If 1t Is carefully borne 1n mind that these "Ideal types" are usefully oversimplified, sometimes to the point of exaggeration, they 66 can be seen to form a clear paradigm of contemporary c ritical theory.

This 1s how thought 1s structured, how theory 1s built.

In "Ideal type," several discrete linguistic approaches may be conceptually distinguished: Suassurlan, Bartheslan, Derrldean; and

Foucaultlan.

First, 1n theoretical, "Ideal type" and 1n some actual, radical formulations, Suassurlan theory may be said to hold that nothing can be explicated except 1n language; that only 1n language can anything

"mean" anything at all. Writing 1s sense, pictures are nonsense; therefore, language deserves pre-eminence as a means of communication and a source of knowledge; all cultural knowledge 1s based upon language. In this sense, language 1s totally determinate; as the philosopher Christopher Norris has noted, language becomes Its own

"Origin," Its own "Final Cause."

Second, Roland Barthes argues that written language 1s essentially not produced by a solitary author; the "work" 1s

"written" by Its own text (total of cultural and linguistic meanings)

"automatically," using the human author 1s a tool, just as the author

("scrlptor") uses a pen. When written, the "work" 1s a dead thing until reconstituted by a "reader," who supplies a text and participates 1n the "writing." Thus, Barthes moves the understanding of writing from "author" to "reader" (c ritic , most Importantly) and from "work" to "text," he moves from a beginning 1n the Structuralism 67 of Suassure and Lev1-Straus to a Poststructurallst position closer to

Derrida.

Third, the work of Jacques Derrida Implies that language (the text Itself), while rich 1n potential meaning, 1s composed of a maze of Inter-textual symbols, each of which are part of the meaning and history, the "subtext," of all the others. In this concept, writing

1s a shifting "text" of 1nter-cont1ngent subtexts which can mean anything and everything, but nothing with absolute permanence, or certainty. In this fleld-theory formulation, nothing means anything except 1n language, but 1n language, 1t means nothing except 1n relation to everything else; 1n this sense, language 1s completely

Indeterminate. It 1s, 1n Derrida's words, "A system 1n wh1 h the . . . original or transcedental signified 1s never absolutely present except 1n a system of differences. The absence of the transcendental signified extends the play of signification Indefinitely."

This Derrldean reductlo ad absurdum of Existentialist indeterminacy 1s subjected to Implied limits by a fourth school of linguistics, the political determinism of Michel Foucault. In Ideal type, this principle Insists that the possible range of meaning of a text 1s broad but 1s nevertheless limited to basic Internal concepts which reflect, reinforce, and celebrate a society's power structure through Its "authorized," supporting discourse.

Derr1d1an and Foucaultlan views, as well as Suassurlan, are not always logically compatible. However, any of them may be used -- 1n 68 the practical politics of photocr1t1c1sm — to attack the general validity of vision as a source of knowledge and to deny the specific validity of photography as an Instrument of knowledge, communication, and culture.

The specifics of such divergent theoretical underpinnings of contemporary photocr1t1c1sm may, 1f examined with sufficient vigor, produce logical and Ideological conflicts between devotees of their various academic scholasticisms. For Instance, Marxist cultural analysis may be viewed by Feminists as a propagandists effort centered 1n an Irrelevant (to women) conflict between two conflicting male-dominated cultures, both based upon male exploitation of women.

Marxists, on the other hand, may declare Feminism an a rtific ia l politics, Involving "no real change," based solely on the temporary le1sur1zat1on of bourgeois women; a le1sur1zat1on which 1s an accidental by-product of the historically Inevitable reconcentration of capital under late capitalism. Followers of Derrida may declare

Foucault's power-based linguistics to be no more than a major explication of a minor Instance of Derrida's own contextual 1sm;

Foucault's disciples may deride Derrida's textual Indeterminism as a self-defeating tool which leads the critic Into an Existentialist

"void" wherein he 1s swallowed up in a textual "black hole," never to return. Advocates of both varieties of textual1sm may, 1n turn,

Indict the Poststructurallst notions of the "simulacrum" as a concept completely anti-textual, ant1-Hngu1st1c; while Marxists and other 69 partisans, political and linguistic, may deride such

Poststructuralism as Incorrectly ahlstorlcal 1n Its "field theory" tendencies to substitute Image for reality and synchronlclty for causality. And so forth, and so on.

However, theoretical clashes within contemporary photocrltidsm are not Inevitable, at least 1f critics do not pursue each of these theories to their conceptual roots and to their Inherent assumptions.

If so pursued, the theories stand revealed as -- 1n Suresh Raval's term — "permanently disputed concepts," concepts opposed at their bases, notions never to be reconciled. But a practical alliance between the advocates and the operationalizations of these notions 1s feasible and 1s, 1n fact, 1n <■ ^fect. This accommodation nicely illustrates the classic organlzatlon-theory definition of politics as an ongoing series of temporary alliances 1n pursuit of mutually shared goals; very little evidence can be cited of serious quarrels between these various radical factions 1n photocrltidsm. They are,

1n practice, united 1n their de facto condemnation of contemporary

American society, of photography as its agent, and of the claim of the visual arts to an eplstemologlcal validity equal to writing.

The "Critocratlc Imperative" and

The "Deconstructlon'VReconstructlon" of Knowledge

The Poststructurallst notion of cr1t1c1sm-1n-the-world that makes this political accommodation Ideologically possible 1s this: 70

As the modern culture of Industrial capitalism decays, so does the

Modernist specialization of academlclzed and professionalized knowledge. (This traditional specialization of knowledge Is a cultural mimicry of the special1zat1on/mass production model of

Industry; 1n Sekula's phrase, "School 1s a factory.") However, the continuing, Post-Modern sh ift — from an older, Industrial society to one r.' W based on mass communication and on Information-processing -- puts the conventional structures and areas of technical, academic and professional knowledge out of work; the successful mass-productlon of knowledge under Modernist Intellectual organization has at last proliferated and ballooned contemporary knowledge beyond manageability. We have become a rigid society of narrow specialists

Isolated by our own arcane symbologles and our disjointed expertise; the physician, the lawyer, the physicist, and the artist can no longer talk to each other, Intelligently or Intelligibly. They have no common knowledge, no shared "language."

In such a situation, a reorganization -- a "deconstruction" and subsequent "reconstruction" -- of knowledge 1s, arguably, required.

In the P oststructurallst view, such recontructlon has begun, and 1s proceeding nicely, even now. This new structure of knowledge rests upon the assumption that all specialties, all knowledge, all culture, all academics, all Inquiry find their origins 1n the structural logic of one system: oral language. (This 1s assumed to be true even of mathematics, computer science, and the visual arts.) 71

Since all knowledge 1s said to emerge, ultim ately, from the structures of linguistics, linguistics Is now the one mega-knowledge;

1n Its application, criticism becomes the one mega-specialty.

Therefore, the pursuit of Inquiry of any kind 1s legitimate only when performed by Hngu1st1cally-or1ented critical writers. Regardless of the variety of linguistic analysis espoused by a critical writer, 1t

1s the writer's craft alone that now stands legitimated (by criticism ) as the preeminent source of knowledge 1n the Post-Modern world. It 1s the writer's quas1-K1plIngesque burden to lead the world of Post-Modern cultures -- colonies, all, of multinational capitalism and Its decadent Intellectual specialization — In Its one proper task: Its own Hngu1st1c/pol1t1cal “deconstruction" and

"reconstruction." The perceived necessity for this may be called the

"crltocratic Imperative."

Deconstruction -- the speculative, analytical attribution of

Interpretative meaning to art-as-text and soc1ety-as-context — Is essentially a philosophy of method, a theory of practice. It 1s the fate of knowledge, once deconstructed, to again be re-constructed by the Poststructurallst writer. To achieve this reconstruction requires new ways of understanding, classifying, and organizing the world of the senses; 1t requires, 1n a phrase, a "general theory of relativity" of culture, plus "special theories of relativity" which

Integrate significantly Important phenomena Into the general theory

Its e lf. 72

Fortunately for contemporary criticism, a general theory which claims to relate together the entire totality of contemporary bourgeois culture 1s available and has, 1n fact, already made great progress In "explanation" of all social phenomena of the

Industrialized world. That theory, of course, 1s Marxist dialectical materialism. To use 1t, the critical writer needs only to transpose

Its logic from the arena of radical n^l tics Into that of the cultural criticism; this transposition establishes the new and privileged critical orthodoxy called "Marxist cultural criticism."

Into this general, Marxist theory of cultural relativity can easily be absorbed certain special theories originating 1n other forms of contemporary politics. These Include the Feminist theories of the male world as organized upon the exploitation of women, the

Lacanlan theories of the development of the psychological "Self" as m1rror-1mage of the "Other," and the Poststructurallst concept of society as simulacrum, as copy-w1thout-or1g1nal.

The accommodation of these Ideas, 1n c ritic a l logic, 1s fairly simple: The grand, general, Marxian theory of society and culture rests upon the primarily economic analyses of dialectical materialism. This dialectic can be used to show how the mass- communlcatlon society becomes, as a result of capitalism 's need to replace revolutionary social action with regimented, pacifying entertainment, the "society of the spectacle." Marxist analysis also can show, as did John Berger 1n Ways of Seeing, how the problem of 73

capitalist overproduction creates a need for artificially high

consumption of goods, a problem remedied by the fet1sh1zat1on of

commodities 1n terms of mass-medla Imagery, or "simulacra." The

psychological mechanism by which the Inhabitant of Post-Modern

society 1s transformed Into a living simulacrum 1s through Lacanlan

socialization, or Mm1rror-1mag1ng." Finally, the logically necessary

(1 n Marxist thought) emergences of political opposition to prevailing bourgeois culture take the forms of Socialist politics, Feminism, Gay

Rights, and student activism. These can be joined together 1n "a new oppositional culture," a culture Integrated 1n both theory and praxis

Into the great Marxist critical projects: political/economic transformation of world society and the Ideological redefinition of human knowledge (1n Terry Eagleton's more dramatic terms, political

"Insurrection" and "the death of literature").

From Sameness to Difference

One of the ways by which Poststructurallst thought accomplishes that redefinition of human knowledge, and along the way acquires Its mystique of Inscrutability, 1s the expression of Poststructurallst notions -- philosophical, political, cultural, linguistic -- In binary oppositions which (unlike such discrete S tructuralist dlads as

Nature/Culture) seem, superficially, to contradict their own logic, to "deconstruct" each other. Thus, such apparent conundrums as "No 74 reality beyond representation," "No meaning outside writing," "No difference but 1n sameness, and no sameness but In difference."

As well as defining Poststructurallst thought by Its most obvious reference — thought which came "after Structuralism" -- 1t

Is also possible, and perhaps less eplphenomenal, to define

Poststructuralism as the method of contemporary critical analysis which Investigates the contemporary, the "Postmodern," social and cultural condition. As such, It may be considered to be, Itself, part of the Postmodern Condition which 1t addresses; to comprehend

Poststructuralism most broadly 1t 1s perhaps well to consider 1t as not a self-contained entity, but as part of the Intrinsic "condition" of the times.

Descent Into the Literature

In discussions above, I have outlined what seems to me to be the most genotypical, most causally basic description of the "cultural shift" from Modern to Postmodern Times: the transition from an

Industrial to an Informational society, from a society dominated by the nuclear family to one reorganizing Itself 1n the Image of the electronic media: TV, computers, satellite transmissions, etc. Such an analysis seems most reasonable as a means of making sociological sense out of the "Postmodern Condition," as a way of relating cultural eplphenomena to th eir generative base. Only thus, I think, 75 can we hope to escape drowning 1n the literature's maelstrom of concepts and neologisms.

Within t^at maelstrom, other thinkers have understood the problematic 1n different dimensions. For Instance, Hal Foster, 1n his Introduction to The Ant1-Aesthet1c: Essays on Postmodern

Culture, has developed a paradigm of Postmodern thought and culture organized around political stance toward the established, capitalist/ patrlarchlal, political and social order. He Identifies or Implies various political Postmodernisms: of Experimentation, of Opposition, of Reaction, of Despair.1 In Foster's value system, descriptions of the Postmodern condition 1n terms of less sweeping, less struggle- oriented terms are Ideologically derided:

For what does It mean to perlodlze 1n terms of postmodernism: to argue that ours 1s an era of the death of the subject (Baudrlllard) or of the loss of the master narratives (Owens), to assert that we live 1n a society that renders opposition d iffic u lt (Jameson) or amidst a medlocracy 1n which the humanities are marginal Indeed (Said)? Such notions are not apocalyptic; they mark uneven developments, not clean breaks and new days. [2]

For those of us who have demands upon the present and the future other than political apocalypse, 1t may seem more worthwhile to think

1n terms merely of making sense of the world around us, of understanding our condition 1n some orderly analytical fashion based on paradigms not necessarily p o litic a l.

To begin to make sense of the w ritings on the Postmodern condition, we might note that the notions of "sameness" and

"difference" are the concepts around which Postmodern thought and 76

cultural practice (Including Postmodern art, and S tructuralist and

Poststructurallst criticism) seem most easily organized. In the

absence of any other definitive conceptual analysis of the massive

lite ra tu re on Postmodernism (the Postmodern Condition) which refers

to the social and cultural engines which generate the Poststructural

"1sm" 1n Its numerous cultural and political forms, I will use

"sameness" and "difference" as my touchstones. This will be a useful

approach, I think, for this very dichotomy provides the conceptual

battleground upon which much of the contemporary critical writing on

Postmodernism, condition) arrays Itself; 1t will also be useful 1n

reconciling the "models in conflict" which the literatu re proliferates.3

Postmodern thought has tended to see today's society as re­ arranging Itself, as undergoing transformation or metamorphosis; such

social change has Implied an Inversion of "sameness" and "difference"

throughout culture, and over time and space. Thus, patterns of culture undifferentiated 1n Modernist thought are seen as breaking down or fragmenting; the same for things assumed permanent 1n history or throughout the space of the developed world. Vice versa, that which has been "Individual" or "unique" 1n Modernist culture 1s seen as suffering "homogenization" or "Implosion" 1n Postmodern times.

Some of the key writings about this leapfrog game of sameness and difference are as follows: 77

Combining the cultural Indeterminism of Sartre with the

Suassurlan definition of language as difference, Barthes4 and

Derrida® expounded the Postmodern Idea of the death of the author and the work and the notion of the culturally determined, randomly

Indeterminate primacy of the text as self-expressing, continually recombining and shifting, p lu ra listic beds of meaning expressing themselves, pluralistically, through the human scrlptor and the language Itself.®

Jurgen Habermas speaks of the contemporary "fragmentation of knowledge.Lyotard writes of a contemporary, experimental pluralism which seeks to establish different, new forms — forms of

"modernism" not yet recognized -- as the orthodoxy of tomorrow.8

Frederick Jameson analyzes the contemporary social condition as one akin to schizophrenia: language loses Its former accepted meanings, experience of the subject becomes personal and 1n terms of images, not words; time becomes fragmented Into a series of perpetual presents, we are "awash In a sea of private languages," desperate to return to a public culture and to less problematic tlmes.^

Terry Eagleton writes of Postmodernism as the dissolution of culture Into forms of commodity production,18 and of

Poststructurallst deconstruction as a pluralistic nihilism, a rejection of all unifying political theory, a desperate Intellectual rationalization for the failures of radical class politics In World

War II and after.*1 Craig Owens13 and Kenneth Frampton13 write of 78 the cultural loss of the Modernist "master-narratlves" and of contemporary rejection of the unifying Modernist myths of progress and mastery. Rosalind Krauss^ and Douglas Crlmpl^ write of the ongoing rejection of Modernist art, while Hal Foster develops the

Idea of the Postmodern rejection of traditional formalist aesthetics and their replacement by an ethic of "anti-aesthetics," an ethic

Intellectual, political, and literary rather than affective or visual.I® Together, these writers posit the Postmodern rejection of

Modernist aesthetics.

The omnipresent Indeterminism of language, "the Indefinite extension of the play of s1gn1f1ers," was posited by Derrida as an

Ineluctable sllpperlness of meaning.17 This notion, extended by some deconstructionist disciples to Imply an almost nihilistic destruction of all possible meaning, 1s a Postmodern and P o ststructurallst notion which undergirds much contemporary ant1-photograph1c (and other anti- cultural) criticism.I®

Tracing the Idea of "difference" back further, we may note

Suassure's original declaration of meaning as based on difference between signs rather than similarity of signs to referents;!® (a

"difference" which maintains the linguistic, lite ra ry Identity of criticism Itself, thus breaking 1t loose from subservience to the a rts).

Going back further, into the very depths of Modernism, we note the theoretical emphasis of Freud on sexual difference and the 79 traditional emphasis of art on total difference; the artist and viewer are each "unique Individuals," the wcr< 1s a "unique piece" which makes a "unique statement."

From Difference to Sameness

The great Structuralist systems of Lev1-Straus, Frye, and others were bu ilt on "differences" such as Nature/Culture; these

Structuralist systems were the birth of Postmodernism.2® More recently, some Postmodern thought, art, and writing tend to reject a

Postmodern emphasis on difference as a slipping back, a retrogression

Into Modernism. While S tructuralist thought provided a bridge from difference to sameness — the Argo, 1n Barthes' classic example, 1s a ship which consisted of different components or "planks," each of which could be replaced by Identical others2* -- Barthes and other writers shifted their analytical emphasis toward sameness, toward a homogeneity of differences, toward a cultural environment of forms which differed from past, Modernist forms but were the same 1n the present. Barthes proclaimed the end of the author and the work, these to be replaced by an automatic outpouring of great cultural texts through the unwitting use of writing by a human scrlptor

Impelled, mach1ne-Hke, by his culture, not by his Individuality.

Jacques Derrida, the great 1ndeterm1n1st himself, acknowledged originality as the reliance upon past forms, but only to the extent such reliance could not be detected as replication of one single 80 preceedlng form. Umberto Eco proclaimed this very Idea as the basis of an emerging, neo-Baroque aesthetic of Postmodernism. This 1s an aesthetic of the sameness of small differences, one which bases Its refinements of taste upon the detection of repetitions, of near- plaglarlsms; 1n Eco's genrlfled Postmodern a rt forms the viewer or reader responds to traces of the familiar rather than to statements of the new.22

Baudrlllard deplored the "Beauborg Effect," the leveling of popular culture Into sameness to the extent that 1t could be seen as having Imploded Into a "black hole,"23 there to be to tally absorbed by the media of Its own communication and to render useless the traditional perceptlc s of self, place, and time: "Thus the body, landscape, time, all progressively disappear as scenes." There 1s no longer difference between public and private space, between now and then 1n time, between the body and the Instrumental machinery which extends It, between thought and the media. All 1s absorbed 1n "a state of fascination and vertigo linked to this obscene delerlum of

communication. " 2 4

Vincent Leo Insinuates this feeling Into photography Itself; he creates a photographic metacritique of photography 1n which different

Images from Robert Frank's The Americans are cut apart, collaged, and

rephotographed together.2 $ in a sense, Leo's Postmodern photographs lose the meaning acquired 1n their production, and acquire a new meaning 1n th eir reproduction; a new universe of meaning proclaiming 81

"no reality but representation" and "no representation but 1n

p astich e (sameness)."

On a grander scale, Foster and Jameson posit the death of philosophy and the absorption of Its concerns and activities -- along

with those of linguistics, politics, sociology, literature, etc. —

Into a common body of "French theory" or "theoretical discourse" which amalgamates within Its e lf all the traditional specialties of

the humanities, the social sciences, cultural arts, and of "high theory" 1n the linguistic and mathematical sciences.26 (Prime exemplars of this theory would be the work of Foucault or

Baudrlllard.)

The Society of the Simulacrum

In Poststructurallst theory of the simulacrum we are, all of us,

1n a sense mere human simulacra, mere cop1es-w1thout-or1g1nals. We are Lacanlan "mlrror-selves" created by our own desperate mimicry, 1n the likeness, not of God, but of those around us.^ We are all

"copies"; none of us are Individuals, none are originals; there 1s no such thing. Society and culture are, 1n turn, the same kind of environment: an endless maze of mirrors 1n which each facet reflects the Image of every other. Sameness 1s fundamental and generic, difference 1s Indeterminate, triv ia l, and 1llus1onary. Nothing exists as "real" except the social: whose nature 1s that of a Great

Hall of Mirrors, empty except for the reflected Images of sim ilar 82

"persons” passing through. Such 1s the society of the simulacrum,

such 1s the Postmodern condition.

This Is the notion which carries the propensities of

Poststructurallst thought (toward ant1-Ar1stotel1an logic, toward

analysis In terms of macro-sameness rather than m1cro-d1fference), to

Its furthest extreme.

Such analysis has had a strong Influence and presence 1n

Poststructurallst photo-cr1t1c1sm.^8 For that reason, and because so

much of that criticism has been In effect, ant1-photograph1c, I wish

to deal with It here In more detail than with the other literature of

Postmodernism (whose expression In political, linguistic, and neo-Platon1c moral analysis ha been dealt with In the chapters on

Allan Sekula, Susan Sontag, and Jonathan Green).

To accomplish this, I will present certain specific Ideas from writings which have been formative 1n the Influence upon the development of the critical concept of the simulacrum; principally, certain writings of Giles Deleuze, Jean Baudrlllard, Rosalind Krauss,

Douglas Crimp, and Hal Foster.

The first of these sources Is "Plato and the Simulacrum," by

Giles Deleuze (translated by Rosalind K ra u ss).29 This piece outlines the origin of the term 1n the writings of Plato, but traces Its development beyond the original Platonic meaning. It then suggests the concepts' applicability to the Postmodern media-dominated 83 society, and 1t shows how this applicability contradicts the Platonic dialectic of "realism" and the "Ideal."

DeLeuze says the Platonic dialectic of Ideas Is not a dialectic of contradltlon, but of forenslcs: 1t does not classify entitles

Into mutually exclusive categories on the basis of Inherent,

Incontestable attributes; rather, It adjudges the relative merits of claims to "true resemblance: of physical Instances to a pure, mental

"Idea" of perfect essence or form:

The Platonic motive [Is] to distinguish essence from appearance, the IntelUgable from the sensible, the Idea from the Image, the original from the copy, the model from the simulacrum. . . The distinction moves between two sets of Images. Copies are secondhand possessors, well-grounded claimants, authorized by [true] resemblance. Simulacra are like false claimants, bu ilt on a dissim ilitude, Implying a perversion, an essential turning away. It 1s 1n this sense that Plato divides the domain of the 1mage-1dols 1n two: on the one hand the Iconic copies, [true] (likenesses), on the other the phantas maqorlc simulacra (semblances). [30]

In Plato's concept, the copy 1s an Instance, a valid reproduction of the Idea which 1s Its essence, while the simulacrum retains the physical form but has no resemblance to the Idea. Deleuze cites an example 1n Christian theology: God made man 1n his Image, but the

Image 1s now simulacrum, having lost the Divine essence of spirituality through Original Sln.^1

A copy, In Platonic thought, 1s not a pejorative term; a copy 1s

Good 1f 1t truly resembles the Idea. (Just as painterly copies were approved before the 19th century, genrlfled folk a rt 1s s till approved as genuinely expressive of an Idea.) 84

The simulacrum Is an uncomprehending Im itation, a rote reproduction of superficial form without knowledge of essence; this

1s now true of the modern commercial stereotype 1n which the spectator uncomprehendlngly fetlshlzes the form of an Ideas' expression, e.g., Andy Warhol's painting of a soup can. Writes

Oe Leuze:

Let us take two formulations: "only that which 1s alike differs," and "only differences are alike." Here are two [different] readings of the world 1n that one bids us to think of difference 1n terms of similarity, or previous Identity; while on the contrary, the other Invites us to think of similarity or even Identity as the product of a basic disparity. The first one 1s an exact definition of the world as Icon. The second, against the f ir s t, defines the world as simulacra. It posits the world Itself as a phantasm. [32]

In other words, there J[s no reality beyond representation; the world the oriental concept of maya, or Illusion. This 1s true, perversely, 1n the sense that there 1s now no such thing as a true copy or resemblance whose similarity would be Important; there are only simulacra whose differences are Important.33

Deleuze characterizes the simulacrum as a self-contained reality of Its own, one which demonstrates and displays the reality of slgn- as-costume, as multiple layers of disguise confirming "the in alterab ility of masks, the Im passibility of s1gns."3* In this phrase we detect the correspondence of De Leuze's reinterpretation of the Platonic simulacrum with the Bartheslan notion of the Inter­ relatedness of Internal texts and subtexts, and Its correspondence to 85 the Derrldean emphasis on Indeterminacy, or lack of reliable connections to real-world referents. Instead of the sign Involving

"real" referents (Suassure), or the copy Invoking the true Idea

(Plato), the sign Invokes only a text of other signs (Barthes), a text which can never be pinned down to specific meanings (Derrida).

Freely translated, this 1s of course the basis of Umberto Eco's

"Postmodern-Baroque" aesthetic of repetition and resemblance: an aesthetic basing Itself on the elaboration of minor differences between simulacra, rather than 1n the nineteenth-century,

"naturalist" canon of exquisitely faithful similarity between Image and reality.

Giles Deleuze has shown the origins of the P oststructurallst simulacrum 1n Plato himself, but has also demonstrated this Platonic concept as Its own final contradiction of Platonic judgemental1sm:

1t 1s a contradiction of the Platonic dialectic of Idea-and- dlfference with a new notion of past1che-and-sameness, a new notion of the origin of everything cultural within complete unoriginal1ty, a new definition of socially accepted truth as emerging from the abandonment of cultural substance to the mindless, uncomprehending repetition of perverted form.

And such 1s the construction of the Idea of the simulacrum by another of Its major critical exponents, Jean Baudrlllard. In his seminal "The Precession of the Simulacrum," Baudrlllard defines the essential condition of Postmodernism as a society 1n which the 86 symbolic displaces and precedes and "causes" the real; a society 1n which the real, the physical, becomes, 1n a sense, a symbol (Index,

Icon) of the symbol 1 c.^

Converting Baudrlllard's thesis to more traditional theoretical terms, Life 1s now entirely an Imitation of Art; Culture revises

Nature, Reality Is an Interpretation of Dream, the Superstructure creates the Base. Thus, Plato, Freud, Lev1-Straus, and Marx are stood, as It were, on their heads; thus, Modernist philosophy's project of the destruction of Platonism, savored so delicately by

Deleuze, 1s both completed and exceeded completed by Baudrlllard, by the conversion of the real Into the symbolic, and then exceeded by

Poststructurallst criticism's overarching project of the death of philosophy (Modernist knowledge) and its succession by "theory," by literary criticism.

Thus, the heroic statues of all the secular saints of humanist

Intellectuallsm have been symbolically smashed, and never more will there be (with the exception of Baudrlllard and other

Poststructurallst critics, of course) what Sir James G. Frazer referred to, 1n The Golden Bough, as a "great Ulysses of the realms of thought." Thought no longer explores the cosmos of the real, 1t merely thinks the thinker; the physical has been destroyed by the symbolic; nothing remains, says Baudrlllard, but "the desert of the real Itself."

Abstraction today 1s no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation 1s no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It 1s 87

the generation by models of a real without origin or reality : a hyperreal. [36]

We live, Implies Baudrlllard, 1n a culture 1n which all 1s pastiche: Illness 1s psychosomatic, Its treatment 1s bureaucratic ritu a l; crime 1s mere role-playing; a society fast emerges 1n which a corrupt Gresham's Law drives out the sound currency of the actual and replaces It with the counterfeit real of the sym bolic.-*7 This applies, he Insists, even to "the visible machinery of Icons being substituted for the pure and Intelligible Idea of God." He attributes the m1llen1al power of the Iconoclasts perpetual quarrel with "Idolatry" to:

the overwhelming, destructive truth which they suggest: hat ultim ately there has never been any God, that only the simulacrum exists, Indeed that God himself has only ever been his own simulacrum. Had they been able to believe that Images only occulted or masked the Platonic Idea of God, there would have been no reason to destroy them. . . . [38]

Baudrlllard traces what he calls the successive stages of the

Image: the reflection of a basic reality [perhaps Plato, Lev1-

Straus], the mask and perversion of a basic reality [perhaps Freud,

Froyer, Darwin] the absence of a basic reality [perhaps Sartre,

Derrida], and finally, the simulacrum, which bears no relation to a basic reality [definitely Baudrlllard].^ Thus, 1n his tracing of the history or Western thought, Baudrlllard seems to step to the head of the ontological parade.

Disneyland, says Baudrlllard, 1s there to "conceal the fact that

It 1s the 'real' country; all of 'real' America, which 1_s Disneyland 88

(just as prisons are there to conceal that 1t Is the social 1n Its entirety, 1n Its banal omnipresence, which 1s c a rc e ra l J."4®

Baudrlllard proceeds to Indict all political activity as equivalent simulacra, regardless of Its Ideology: Watergate burglary 1s the same 1nstrus1ve/terror1st1c tactic as Its journalistic Investigation; bombings by any te rro rist group of the le ft, right, or center, are the same; the actual social function of the Vietnam war was to force the transformation of a "real" native Insurgency ("real," therefore unpredictable and politically dangerous) Into the "symbolic" order of

"legitimate" nation-states (symbolic, "unreal," therefore benign and trustworthy). This social function of Vietnam was shared by both the f i r s t and second worlds: Interest 1n Vietnam was abandoned by both

"capitalist" and "socialist" nation-states once both camps had "won" by replacing Insurgent uprising with North Vietnamese s ta b ility .4*

Power, too, for some time now, produces nothing but signs of Its resemblance. . . . 11: 1s no longer a question of the Ideology of power, but of the scenario of power. Ideology only corresponds to a betrayal of reality by signs, . . . [42]

Like the Loud family 1n 1971, all of us (claims Baudrlllard) have our lives arranged by television, the ultimate source of the contemporary simulacrum. TV "watches" us, 1_t directs the s1t-com scenarios which compare our lives. We no longer have the objectifying, Renaissance-perspective power of the gaze; rather, we are gazed upon by the blind scrutiny of an age dedicated to TV; now, the distinction between active and passive 1s abolished; the spectacular has been abolished, we are the spectacle. We have 89 dissolved Into Mcluhan's medium, and 1t Into us. There 1s no longer distinction between social cause and social effect, between subject and object, ends and means. There 1s no longer meaning 1n "turning on the TV," for the TV 1s only we, ourselves.^ As Pogo quipped, "We have met the enemy, and they 1s us."

Such 1s Jean Baudrlllard's vision of the slmulacral society. I have presented and Interpreted 1t here 1n some d etail, for -- though

1t 1s a critique centered upon television -- 1t contributes mightily to the social vision of Poststructurallst photocrltidsm.

Photography Itself 1s even more Important to that vision. In the words of Abigail Solomon-Godeau:

But however one wishes to theorize Postmodernist a rt (and one cannot speak of a critical consensus), the Importance of photography within It 1s undeniable. More Interestingly, the properties of photography Imagery which have made 1t a privileged medium In postmodern art are precisely those which for generations art photographers have been concerned to disavow. [44]

Specifically, this disavowal 1s aimed at Modernist notions of difference: originality, uniqueness, Individuality, authenticity, separateness, discreteness, purity -- those concepts or Ideals which can be applied equally to the Modernist a r tis t, statement, work, and medium.

Earlier 1n this writing, this very problematic (Modernism vs.

Postmodernism) has been considered In some detail; 1t needs no repetition at this point. However, this problematic does serve as a structure and rationale for arguments emerging from the politics -- 90 social and professional — of criticism Itself. It 1s these politics which are the subject of this writing, and 1t Jhs at this point that these politics deserve recognition and attention: like a pilot-fish fastened to a shark, the critical theory Is attached to Its political prime mover; we cannot study the former 1n the absence of the latter.

As mentioned above, Hal Foster, 1n his Preface to The Ant1-

Aesthetlc: Essays on Postmodern Culture, presents a synthesis of essays 1n support of his advocacy of a politicized "Postmodernism of

Resistance" to capital1st/patr1arch1al culture. He demands of us:

a will to grasp the present nexus of culture and politics and to affirm a practice resistan t to both academic modernism and political reaction. . . . In the face of a culture of reaction on all sides, a practice of resistance 1s needed. [45]

This call to erect and man critical barricades around the new politics of a still-nameless, futurist Utopia 1s, as Foster himself

Implies, Impractically visionary: "Such a strategy, of course, remains romantic 1f 1t 1s not aware of Its own limits, which 1n the present world are strict Indeed."46 [As Terry Eagleton pointedly

Inquires, "Will reading . . . bring down the bourgeois state?"]

In real life, the political transformation of society demanded by radical criticism for the 1980's has proven, like President

Hoover's prediction of prosperity for the 1930's, further away than just around the corner. However, 1n his analytical critique of the theory of Postmodernism, entitled "Re: Post" (1982), Foster Implied

that criticism had nowhere t o go except politics: 91

As a textual practice, postmodernist art cannot be translated: criticism, then would not be Its supplement. But then what would 1t be? What does criticism do . . . ? Does It enter as another code 1n the text, of the Art? [This, of course, Is Jonathan Green's solution!] Or does 1t Initiate the very play of signs that Ijs the text [this Is of course the political solution: to transform art Into political discourse]. [47]

Foster ju s tifie s this recommendation for critic a l advance/ retreat Into the political on pragmatic, occupational grounds. In apparent reference to his earlier question "What does the critic do?" he sounds a professional alarm, a caveat against the consequences of deconstructlve criticism . He continues the above:

My question, finally, 1s simple, do c ritic s today engage postmodernist art as Its textual nature would seem to demand? "As soon as one seeks to demonstrate 1n the way," Derrida writes, "that there 1s no transcendental or privileged signified and that the domain or play of signification henceforth has no lim it, one must reject even the concept and the word 'sign' Its e lf — which 1s precisely what cannot be done." (Should one add: "even the concept and critique Itself?") But this 1s precisely what cannot be done -- such is the eplstemologlcal bind of poststructuralism and postmodernism. [48]

But 1f political resistance 1s dangerous, futile, and romantic;

If deconstructlve critique 1s theoretically Impossible, or at least corrupt (1 n that 1t "enfolds a contradiction: 1t must use, as methologlcal tools at least, the very concepts 1t calls Into question,")^ what's a critic to do? Having rushed headlong down two branches of the primrose path (the path of ant1-bourgeo1s, anti- capitalist political class struggle, and the trail of deconstructlve literary nihilism), how 1s the critic to maintain social acceptability sufficient to permit him to continue to write? What 1s to be the 92 subject of his critical Inquiries? What, as Lenin asked, 1s to be done?

Common sense and occupational advantage suggest an answer: take up the politics as the "language of real life." If we wish not to totally reinvent criticism, perhaps we need only to reinterpret politics. In Marx's/Engels' notion of politics as the "language of real life," political Ideology may be seen as simply an extension of the aspiration of occupations In the workaday w orld.^ In such a scenario, the macropol1t1cal Ideology of Marxian-oriented Poststruc­ turalism fades out, while the m1cropol1t1cal Ideology of cr1t1c1sm- as-professlon materializes as Its replacement. While retaining some of the rhetorical aura of antlcapltallst, an 1patr1arch1al1st politics, criticism may simply divert Its attack to Institutions which directly compete with Its hopes for Intellectual and professional dominance over the a rts, th e ir critique, and their study.

These Institutions are the museum of a rt, the academic discipline of art history, and, of course, the arts themselves. In his 1979 essay, "Pictures," Douglas Crimp defines Postmodernist art as that which melds media, which exists (1n Michael Fried's term) "1n the space between the arts." That space 1s time, the theater, performance, pastiche, simulation; a space which Incorporates as privileged that which refutes the pilmacy of the different and original. Crimp's examplars are the non-narrative, endlessly 93 repetitive fencing performances of Jack Goldstein; the non-personal, non-portraits of Cindy Sherman 1n anonymous stereotypical stagings of roles derived from the media; the rephotography of Sherrie Levine, which foregrounds the problematics of origin and context, etc., which

Inform Postmodernist art and criticism.

Crimp's exhibit and essay mark, together, a critic a l reorientation to the Postmodern arts and to photography's centrality, as an art of reproduction and repetition, to those arts.

However, from the perspective of the politics of cr1t1c1sm-as- professlon, Crimp's exhibit and essay are remarkable, not only for what Is said, but what 1s not; they are remarkable for that which 1s silently proclaimed 1n action.

Crimp's tacit manifesto Includes the following political theses;

(1) Curatorshlp and exhibition — once the prerogative of the museum and of Its curator, are now 1n the physical domain of alternative spaces and 1n the professional purview of the critical writer;

(2) While the critique of exhibited Images by museum curators and gallery entrepreneurs may be ethically suspect as naked self-interest and as shallow sales puffery, the organization of art exhibits by critics -- and their consequent utility to those critics 1n the definition and explication of art — 1s a highly ethical and laudatory extension of critical responsibility; (3) The subject of such critical connolsseurshlp Is not the celebration of art of yesterday, but the establishment of the art of today and tomorrow, 94

and, therefore, (4) The museum 1s dead, replaced by the Institution

of critical writing.

This claim 1s theoretically explicated 1n elaborate detail 1n

Crimp's subsequent (1980) essay, forthrightly entitled "On the

Museum's Ruins." In this piece, Crimp subjects his presumably deceased competitor, the Modernist museum, to "Post" mortem.

Crimp opens his commentary with a quote from Adorno that

"Museums are the family sepulchres of works of art."^1 He follows with a more recent (1980) quote by Hilton Kramer to the effect that

Nowadays there 1s no art so dead that an art historian cannot be found to detect some simulacrum of life 1n Its molderlng remains. In the last decade, there has, 1n fact, arisen 1n the scholarly world a powerly sub-profession that specializes 1n these lugubrious disinterments. [52]

Crimp contrasts Kramer's metaphors of lif e and death 1n art

(based upon the decease of "artworks themselves, th eir autonomous quality threatened only by the distortions that a particular misguided Installation might Impose") with Adorno's view of the mortality of art 1n the museum "as a necessary effect of an

Institution caught 1n the contradictions of Its culture and therefore extending to every object contained there."

Leaving behind Adorno's sim ile of museum/mausoleum, Crimp extends Foucault's analysis of all society as an Institution of confinement:

Foucault has analyzed . . . the asylum, the clinic, and the prison -- and their respective discursive formations -- madness, Illness, and crim inality. There 1s another such Institution ripe for analysis 1n Foucault's 95

terms — the museum -- and another discipline — art history. They are the preconditions for the discourse we know as modern a rt. [53]

Crimp argues that modern a rt 1s the a rt of the museum; more precisely, the art based upon previous museum pieces. He quotes

Foucault again:

Dejeuner sur l'Herbe and Olympia were perhaps the f ir s t "museum" paintings, the first paintings 1n European art that were . . . legible reference . . . of the new and substantial relationship of painting to Itself, as a manifestation of the existence of museums and particular reality and Interdependence that paintings acquire 1n museums. In the same period, The Temptation [of St. Anthony] was the first literary work to comprehend the greenish Institutions where books are accumulated and where the slow and Incontrovertible vegetation of learning quietly proliferates. Flaubert Is to the library what Manet 1s to the museum. They both . . . e re c t th e ir a r t w ithin the archive. [54]

Crimp then quotes Eugenio Donato to the effect that Foucault's novel of the looney librarians, the compulsive copyists Bouvard and

Pecuchet, 1s really a metaphor for the museum, not the library; this argument rests on the biased notion that a library, being based on literature, can have a rational organization of related materials, while a museum, being an archeological display of unrelated shards of culture, cannot. Donato says:

The set of objects the Museum displays 1s sustained only by the fiction that they somehow constitute a coherent representational universe. The fiction 1s that a repeated metonymic displacement of fragment for totality, object to label, series of objects to series of labels, can still produce a representation which 1s somehow adequate to a nonHqulstlc [emphasis mine] universe. Such a fiction 1s the result of an uncritical belief 1n the notion that ordering and classifying, that 1s to say, the spatial juxtaposition of fragments, can produce a representational 96

understanding of the world. Should the fiction disappear, there Is nothing left of the Museum but "bric-a-brac," a heap of meaningless and valueless fragments of objects which are Incapable of substituting themselves either metonymically for the original objects or metaphorically for their representations. [55]

As an Indictment of the museum's claims to representation, this passage from Donato seems extremely persuasive; 1t contains a considerable degree of truth. However, this truth is obviously no more than a matter of degree; few museum exhibitions (or even collections) will claim absolutely "adequate" Inclusions, Inclusions which would make further acquisitions completely superfluous.

S till, the Inadequacy of most museums 1n their efforts to display "a representational understanding of the world" must be admitted. Here, the logic and correctness of Donato's argument Is, to some degree, Incontrovertible: 1t cannot be proved entirely false. However, 1t can be easily countered by turning 1t back upon

Itself; by metacrltlcally examining Its assumptions, Its politics, and Its ability to survive Its own logic.

As 1s Sontag's assault upon photography, Donato's Indictment of the museum 1s an extension of the ancient eplstemologlcal controversy concerning the relative validity of seeing vs. language as a means of knowledge. It contains Christopher Norris' "Linguistic Turn,"56 the doubtful assumption that fragmented representation of reality by objects 1s Inadequate, while the same fragmented representation by symbols Is not. Donato's argument also resembles Sontag's 1n Its neo-Platon1c rage against the the violation of the totality of the 97

Ideal/real by Its false, poor Imitations; also like Sontag's argument, Donato's expresses the competltve, professional bias of the writer (the user and filler of libraries) against the curator and the artist (the user and filler of museums).

Donato's argument could be dealt with ju st as I have dealt with

Sontag's, by showing that each of Its contentions 1s Incontestable but that each applies as well to writing as to art, as well to the library as to the museum. (Perhaps I should produce a simulacrum of the play on Susan Sontag's work, entitling 1t "The Trial of John

Szarkowskl.")

Next, Crimp argues that -- having done away with the credibility of the traditional museum — this specific d1scred1tat1on must now be extended to the "new museum," to Andre Malraux's Museum Without

Walls; to art made accessible by reproduction.

Malraux argues that the technology of photography permits Images of a rt objects to be combined outside the walls of the museum. This converts a location where Images are collected and compared — 1n other words, vicariously "curated" — to function as a museum, as a place of study of the arts and their history. This capability of mobile Images to be recombined, ad Infinitum, permits their study to be facilitated on a quantitatively exponential scale; from this study emerges the presence, validating proof, and detailed Imagery of master cultural styles. 98

On grounds philosophical and political, Crimp objects to

Malraux's claim of the existence and value of cultural and artistic styles. He derides this

deception to which a rt history, now thoroughly professionalized, 1s most deeply, 1f often unconsciously, committed. [57]

Having apostaslzed a rt history as Humanist and essen tlallst,

Crimp presses his final argument on photography:

Malraux makes a fatal error near the end of his Museum: he admits within Its pages the very thing that had constituted its homogeneity; that thing 1s, of course, photography. So long as photography was merely a vehicle by which art objects entered the Imaginary museum, a certain coherence obtained. But once photography Its e lf enters, an object among others, heterogeneity 1s reestablished at the heart of the museum; Its pretensions of knowledge are doomed. Even photography cannot hypostatlze style from a photograph. [58]

Crimp offers no evidence, or even speculation, as to why photography cannot demonstrate style; this seems a statement so vague as to be meaningless and so contrary to the everyday evidence of the senses as to be absurd.

Further, Crimp's unsupported allegation of photography's reduction of the Museum's coherence to an absolute heterogeneity of texts seems the opposite of another statement, made shortly before that, to the effect that

Photography not only secures the admittance of objects, details, etc., to the museum; 1t Is also the organizing device: 1t reduces the now even vaster heterogeneity to a single perfect similitude. [59] 99

Crimp seems to envision photography reducing the universe of

reproduced art objects to a complete Derrldean chaos of difference

while, at one and the same time, he sees this "vaster heterogeneity"

re-reduced to the simple singularity of the simulacrum. Thus, he manages colncendent applications of the opposing, binary damnations of contemporary literary criticism: "deconstruction" of texts Into a meaningless jumble of difference, and a simultaneous coalescing of texts Into similarity without signification.

Here, we confront again the fundamental contradiction within

P o ststructurallst criticism : sameness as essence, difference as essence. On the one hand, Derrida's centrifugal vision of cultural phenomena: "the center cannot hold" 1n a language which perpetually flies apart, which deconstructs Itself Into a quicksand of shifting difference, of slippery heterogeneity. On the other, a society of centripetal culture wherein genuine difference "Implodes" Into

Baudrlllard's "black hole" of pop-med1a symbols, Into a morass of consumerlst, mass media simulacra.

This latter vision Informs the contemporary social analysis of the writer next to be considered here: Rosalind Krauss, the critic whose Structuralist and Poststructurallst writings are most directly

Involved with the medium of photography.

Rosalind Krauss seems the premier Intellectual persona of today's photocrltlcal scene. She holds an earned Doctorate 1n Art

Hlstoiy from Harvard. She 1s co-founder and co-editor of October, 100 the leading Poststructurallst critical journal; she 1s very much Its guiding force and s p irit, and she 1s the mentor of such other prominent critics as Hal Foster and Craig Owens, She Is a veteran of

Artforum, Vogue, and other ellte-culture publications; she writes prollflcally and 1nsp1r1ngly 1n October and In other published works, such as the recent volume on the Surrealist photographic exhibit at the Corcoran. A compendium of her writings has recently been published 1n book form as The O riginality of the Avant-Garde and

Other Modernist Myths,^ and her leadership of October's affairs constantly pushes forward the frontiers of photocr1t1c1sm 1n

Innovative, experimental, and fascinatingly unpredictable directions.

Her writing continues to be centered upon the medium of photography Itself and upon a never-ending Inquiry Into Its relationship to culture, writing, and the other arts. Her scholarly erudition 1s equal to that of Sekula; her prose 1s as suave as that of Sontag, as genteel as that of Solomon-Godeau. Unlike many other writers, she tends to give direct credit to the Intellectual progenitors of her own thought and to quote them repeatedly and explicitly. Like Sontag, her critical curlouslty leads her to

Investigate one medium, oeuvre, artist, and analytical direction after another. Unlike Sekula — whose work 1s a relentless, minimalist, two-note orchestration of maniacal Marxist class struggle and Foucaultlan fascination with the deconstruction of decadence Into power -- Krauss' work ranges widely. It varies from a consideration 101 of the rejection of Modernist aesthetics within the "expanded aesthetic field" of contemporary sculpture®* to the creation of nominative genre of works by the signification of artist's proper names.®^ Of special Interest here 1s Its tendency to focus on the relationship of photography to writing, to reality, and to the arts.

As are these other critical ruminations, her persistent consideration of the nature of photography Itself 1s coir.mendably eclectic and searching. Her anti-photographic critique, while sometimes vitriolic, extreme, and even, on rare occasion, narrow­ minded, 1s not a broadly Inclusive condemnation of the medium itself.

It 1s confined to that photography which presents Itself as a contemporary extension of Modernist art anc s celebration of "mythic"

Modernist concepts she views as deceased: authorship, originality, uniqueness, the avant-garde, etc.

This accounts for her scornful analysis of the recent platinum prints of Irving Penn as tired simulacra, as unconscious manifestations of contemporary commercial stereotype melded with exhausted painterly tradition. Penn's use of an antique banquet camera — to achieve an extended angle of view and to express the momento morl symbolism of death as omnipresent celebrant of the banquet of Ute — 1s characterized by Krauss as no more than the slmulacral form of the commercial magazine's two-page spread.

Krauss' position on photography as simulacrum 1s the essence of her anti-photographic critique, a critique which 1s strangely 102 situated In Its medium of expression, Its degree of Influence upon photographic academia, and Its relationship to her other preoccupations within photocr1t1c1sm. Her writing on photography as simulacrum has not been extensive, seeming to form something of a footnote or marginal notation to the remainder of her work. Its

Influence on the academic profession results, Instead, from her major address to the assembled membership of the Society for Photographic

Education at Its 1983 National Conference 1n Philadelphia. In this address she soundly condemned such work as the Irving Penn platinums mentioned above. She Implied a dismal picture of contemporary art and culture as omnipresent Imitation of past traditions, as a desperate attempt to deny the death of modern art by raising false phoenixes from Its molderlng ash.

While her remarks 1n the SPE address were reconstituted 1n a later article for October,^3 this article has had little Influence or exposure to the field, rank and file, at least 1n comparison to her conference address; October certainly enjoys less coverage 1n photographic academia than major addresses at national conferences of the SPE.

Krauss' major fascinations with the photographic medium Itself have been, not with Its specific forms of contemporary simulacra, but rather, with Its 1ntr1ns1cs; with her own Ingenious conceptualizations of photography's basic Internal nature and Its external correspondences to writing and the visual arts. 103

She has felt free to minimize current Poststructurallst

obsessslons with photography as political Image, as propaganda, and

as direct agent of subject constitution and gender construction; free

to reconsider photography Its e lf as Indexlcal sign which physically

models Its referent, as automatic trace of nature, as technological

tool of topographic survey and of scientific exploration.64 She also

credits photography with being the Inspiration for a sophisticated

a rt of the 1970's which -- as 1n such Indexlcal works as Matta-

Clark's excavated floors and Michelle Stuart's rubbings — are

physical traces of that which they themselves represent.66

From simple Indexlcal1ty, she extends her thought on art as

photographic Index to a truly enlightening Interpretation of

Duchamp's Large Glass. With Its suspension of objects within the

fla t pictorial field, Its commentary by Duchamp with references to

"Instantaneous state of rest," "rapid exposures," and "choice of

possibilities," and the location of all these phrases In Duchamp's

deliberate extension and definition of the work's significance by

"captions" (commentary), Krauss presents Large Glass as an elaborate

metaphor for the photograph Itself.66

She also recognizes the Indexlcal tracery of the photograph as

the optimal vehicle for a Postmodernist art which replies to the question "What would 1t look like not to repress the concept of the

copy? What would It look like to produce a work that acted out the discourse of reproductions without originals, [the discourse of the 104 simulacrum]?"67 Krauss' answer, of course, Is an exemplar: the deadpan rephotography of Sherrie Levine's unannounced plagiarisms.

Finally, 1n a recent Issue of her journal October (an Issue seemingly devoted to emerging urges, within Poststructurallst criticism, toward the reinvention of contemporary criticism as memento mori, as the newly pseudopolltlcal obsession of the traditional avant-garde with decadence-as-sex-and-death) Krauss posits the nature of the photograph as death-1mage, as deceased double of the object depicted.6® (Why she failed to recognize and applaud this concept as the nature of Irving Penn's memento mori, his

Images of bones and detritus entombed 1n archival plantlnum, rather than raging against them as slmulacral, as tired reprise of the dead conventions of an exhausted Modernist painting, 1s not clear. This, of course, 1s here a merely peripheral question.)

Leaving behind Krauss' concerns with the photograph as Index, we next encounter her Intense dedication to a notion of photography as/1f writing. The most commonsenslcal of the levels on which she develops this problematic 1s the Idea that photography 1s "writlng-

1n-absence," that 1t requires, for the addition of significance, the act of caption: What would the vaunted realism of Life Magazine's photojournalism be without Its captions and essays? As Barthes said of the Argo, the photograph has "no cause but Its name" -- without

Its nominative caption, the photography does not, 1n the sense of Its full power of signification, even "exist." (It would of course exist 105 physically, but only as a message-wlthout-a-code, as an unexpressed condition In which the s1gn1f1er has the same relation to Its

Ungually amplified signified as the latent Image to the developed silv er negative.) Krauss recognizes and honors the photographic

Image as a trace of nature, a natural phenomenon, but one whose physical significance 1s dormant, uninterpreted, unrevealed; such revelation depends on Its being supplied an external "text" by w ritten accompanlement or by Incorporation into a series of Images which supply a "cinematic narrative;" or else by the alteration of the physical referent in order to expose its own meaning, as 1n

Katta-Clark's physically excised buildings. Thus, Krauss builds an elaborate case — without saying so — for the necessity of criticism and Its supremacy over visual art.

Beyond the photograph as simple Index, and beyond the photographic Image as message-wlthout-code, Krauss sees another level of semlotlc activity 1n the photograph's function as s1gn1f1er. This

1s the photograph as Protean writing, as Ideograph, a state of being

1n which Images' Individuated meanings can be combined Into a hieroglyphic with Its own new Gestalt, Its own text derived -- like

Vincent Leo's rephotographed, recombined shards of Robert Frank's pictures -- from "linear" presentation of "wrlterly" recombinations of deconstructed parts. Such "shards" of pictorial meaning transform themselves Into "writing," losing their status as "pictures," at the moment of their loss of Indexlcal or Iconic "presence." This loss of 106

"presence" occurs when parts of Images are physically cut out of the

photographic paper and re-comb1ned with one another 1n the midst of

an Individually Isolating; blank white field, like words on a printed

page. Though new meaning may also be supplied by the juxtaposition

of the hieroglyphic with captions (as 1n the posters of John

Heartfleld) It Is the new combinations of parts of Images themselves

whose semlotlc richness contributes much of the delicious 1rony.®^

This semlotlc richness, when combined with the photography's loss of

"presence," converts the photo Into that most honorific of critical

categories, "writing;" and the process by which this 1s accomplished,

cutting up and pasting together, becomes a physical metaphor for that

most honorific of critical activities, "deconstruction" and

"reconstruction."

Returning to the concept of the photography as uncoded message,

we may now discover that Krauss speculates still another, and this

time almost mystical, signifying role for the photograph. This 1s

the role of slgn-as-slgn, as sign testifying to, revealing,

foregrounding, betraying, emphaslng, boasting of Its own nature. (As

an Interstate Highway sign, huge and green and rectangular, uses Its

physical attributes to proclaim Its own Identity, so a photographic

image says by its temporally removed Index, Its static "reality of

havlng-been-there," that it comes not only 1n Us own behalf, but In behalf of something else, a signified, a traced nature surviving from the past.) 107

This significance 1s doubled, literally and figuratively, by the

Surrealist strategy of double-exposure, a strategy that submits the photograph to the spacing effect of the printed page:

For It Is doubling that produces the formal rhythm of spacing — the two-step that banishes the unitary condition of the moment, that creates within the moment an experience of fission. For 1t 1s doubling that elicits the notion that to an original has been added Its copy. The double 1s the simulacrum, the second, the representative of the original. . . . In being seen 1n conjunction with the original, the double destroys the pure singularity of the f ir s t. [70]

This, of course, Includes what Modernism knows as "flaunting the presence of the medium." However, Krauss goes beyond the flaunting

Itself to use 1t as a sign that the picture 1s not only a picture, but potentially a kind of writing. Therein, of course, 1n the professional bias of written criticism, lies the photograph's highest, most privileged status: photography returns to Its Origin, the Word.

The logic of Krauss1 deliberations on the identity of the photograph with writing 1s carried even a step farther 1n her speculations on "The Photographic Conditions of Surrealism." These conditions may be considered, 1n Krauss' view, as not necessarily the depiction of dream, or even the trademark use of a particular visual style; rather, the aesthetic process definitive of Surrealism 1s the representation of a very particular experience: a conscious awareness of reality Itself as representation, an experience of 108

nature as sign, as code, as — 1f you will — writing Itself. Says

Krauss:

No account of Surrealist photography would be complete 1f It could not Incorporate the unmanlpulated Images that figure 1n the movement's publications -- works like the Bolffard big toes, or the "Involuntary Sculptures" photographed by Brassal for Salvador Dali, . . -

What the camera frames and thereby makes visible Is the automatic writing of the world; the constant, uninterrupted production of signs. . . . the unconscious production of sexual Imagery throughout all aspects of culture [per an esssay by Tristan Tzara about the design of hats] — the frame announces the camera's ability to find and Isolate what we could call the world's constant writing of erotic symbols, Its ceaseless automatism. [71]

In other words, from Surrealism comes "No Reality Beyond

Representation," the current Poststructurallst shibboleth. (The

Importance of this Surrealist notion of real1ty-as-wr1t1ng 1n Krauss' analytical armentarlum 1s suggested by her use of one of the Bolffard big toes, referred to In the above quote, as the cover Illustration for her retrospective volume The O riginality of the Avant Garde and

Other Modernist Myths. )

Krauss, 1t appears, 1s presenting a literary/artistic parallel of Baudrlllard's thesis: the relentless, ongoing absorption of the real, the physical, Into the symbolic as the conceptual basis of understanding the emerging social and cultural world.?? In both versions, nature becomes culture, reality becomes symbol, symbol becomes reality; the trajectory of current events 1s a flight Into the condition of "no reality beyond representation," the

Poststructurallst definition of Postmodernism. 109

In Baudrlllard's exposition, 1t Is television which absorbs everything and converts all Into Itself; 1n Krauss', 1t 1s writing.

First, the photograph becomes wr1t1ng-1n-absence, the stimulus to its own written commentary. Then, photography becomes Ideograph and hieroglyph, a prim itive plcture-scrlpt. Next, photography 1s seen as slgn-of-slgns; as Index of Its own nature as slgnlfler. Finally, 1t

(photography) becomes a surreal record of real1ty-as-s1gn, of the world as automatic writing. Like Barthes' author, all physical reality 1s dead and Inert; It has emerged from the cocoon of criticism as mere scrlptor of Inherent texts, as corpse possessed and moved by the spirit of writing. "Origin" 1s no longer 1n objective reality, 1t 1s 1n language. "In the b 3lnn1ng was [1s, and ever shall be] the word."

And so, we have arrived again at criticism's politics. Barthes decreed that the understanding of understanding has moved Its focus from work to text, from author to reader. Further, he suggested that only the critic 1s criticism's classical Ideal, the "capable reader;" that "only the critic can execute [carry out, perform, write] the text." Sim ilarly, Krauss' view of photography (and of reality

Itself) as reducible to forms of writing brings the visual arts (and reality Itself) under the hermeneutical Jurisdiction of the critic.

The fragmentation of knowledge under Modernist academic specialization, and the fragmentation of art Into different discrete media, have been (with Frederick Jameson) abolished; all culture 1s 110 text, all writing 1s reading, all the world's physlcallty 1s automatic writing; all vision 1s therefore reading. Since only the critic 1s credentlated to read, the politically based crltocratlc

Imperative of Sekula 1s paralleled by an apolitical, mystical/ literary Imperative: the melding of Barthes' linguistic eplstemology and Krauss' mystical metamorphosis of the real Into symbol, of the world Into writing, has (theoretically) accomplished the professional

Imperialism for which they have, separately and Incrementally, slowly been setting the conceptual stage. (If It were not true that the relationships of language and writing to life Itself are practical rather than theoretical, we could predict the soon-to-be achievement of the "Insurrection" emphasized by Terry Eagleton, but with the establishment of a crltocratlc, rather than proletarian, State.)

It seems, here, that the Idea of the physical world's "ceaseless production of automatic writing" 1s a concept which Is Indefensible, unless 1t simply means that the ordinary processes of the physical and cultural environment randomly produce forms which human culture obsessively Interprets In certain ways, ways which are not related to any Internal teleology of physics and chemistry. Is the physical

"Invagination" of the crown of a hat an expression of some Inner, universal force/language of atoms, or 1s 1t just what springs to human mind 1n an age of Freudian repression? One suspects that this la tte r 1nterpret1on Is the correct one, even though 1t may not be as I l l

useful to the Imperialistic politics of criticism as more the

mystical, magical, or teleologlcal ones advanced by Rosalind Krauss.

Hard metacrltlcal questions do need to be asked of Krauss' work,

for It does, at times, specifically declare Itself as occupationally

political. For example, 1n her Introduction to Originality of the

Avant Garde. Krauss speaks of

the relatively recent capture of art-critical writing by art history -- an art history that has Itself become Increasingly h1stor1c1st In the last several decades and 1s pursuing questions of authorship as though no critique had ever been advanced about the methodological status of these concepts. [73]

Krauss' response to this "capture" has been her espousal (1n common with Baudrlllard and others) of a vision of today's society as one dominated by, Indeed consisting of, the ah lsto rlcal, acausal simulacrum. To quote her again on this:

We are standing now on the threshold of a postmodernist art, an art of a fully problematlzed view of representation. In which to name (represent) an object may not necessarily be to call 1t forth, for there may be no (original) object. For this postmodernist notion of the orlglnless play of the slgnifler we could use the term simulacrum. [74]

Her notion of the simulacrum 1s completely ant1-h1stor1c1st, as

Cartier-Bresson's "decisive moment;" as least as far as art Is concerned. It 1s a view of "causality" as synchronic1ty, not temporal succession; a view of relationships between things In the world as validly detectable only In thin slices of time, philosophy of photography, as 1n Kurt Lewln's psychological "field theory." The simulacrum also resembles a recent research view of subatomic 112 physics: a view which defines the results of the "smashing of atoms" as particles which cannot be systematically related to prior states or events: particles exist, for a twinkling, only 1n relation to each other.75 Such 1s Krauss' analysis of "Sculpture 1n the Expanded

Field," and such 1s her affection for photography as "moment preserved," as prototype of synchronlclty.

Her case against the h1stor1c1st causal 1sm of conventional art history of course 1s convincing; why should we be persuaded that an artists' work 1s "caused" by his relationship with a woman, or his regard for his dog? If we are persuaded, how can 1t be proven? It would seem that conventional art history 1s as precarious, 1n a claim to total methodological authority, as 1s Krauss' advocacy of the simulacrum. This may be only a matter of thesis and antithesis 1n the theory of art; what will emerge as synthesis 1s s till unknown.

As the causal speculations of a h1stor1c1st art criticism are so un1ver1f1able as to approach, 1n many cases, the condition of the ridiculous, the same can be true of a structuralist schema of

Interdependent parts, or a poststructurallst deconstruction into unrelated, unpredictable, contrary, fragmented possibilities of meaning. As It Is Impossible to empirically prove or disprove such a proposition as "Diane Arbus' dark moods once may have led her to present, as a finished work, a plain black photograph," so 1t 1s

Impossible to limit the meaning of such a statement to metaphor of the structure of language, or to simile of the shifting texts within 113 language, or, contrarlly, to define 1t as a repository of unlimited possibilities of deconstructlve or Interpretive choice.

However, all deconstructlve methods, Structuralist and

Poststructurallst, have one assumption 1n common: the location of

Original meaning within language: not (rationally or phenomenologl- cally) In the mind, not (empirically) In an objective external reality, not (semlotlcally) 1n the visual Information of the Image, not (objectively) 1n Its physical referent, not (aesthetically) 1n

"the eye of the beholder."

Traditional philosophical thought -- empirical, rationalist, aesthetic, mystical, theological, moral, etc. — has never depended on in assumption of an "origin," a generative reality or principle, within language; 1t has depended, rather, on the opposite assumption of the dependence of language on thought: no positive system of philosophical Inquiry, from Plato through Descartes, Kant, and the early Wittgenstein, has been based on the primacy of language as

"origin," "first principle," "ultimate source."^ However, with the rise of skeptical, "anti" philosophies of Ungual mean1ng/non- meanlng, language Its e lf — the tool and manner-of-be1ng of the literary critic — now becomes oraculor, deified, exclus1v1st1cally

"meaningful." In a political bonanza for the struggling profession of literary criticism, Its own occupational specialty becomes at once the source of all knowledge and the means to 1t; 1t therefore 1s 1n the same professional position vis-a-vis philosophy, and all other 114

Modernist knowledge specialties, as would be astronomy to the medical

physicians If all disease were suddenly declared to emanate from the

stars.

Astronomers have not yet absorbed the practice of medicine, but

literary criticism has declared Itself the beneficiary of all other, now-outmoded, non-Hngu1st1c analysis. As Frederick Jameson wrote:

A generation ago there was still a technical discourse of professional philosophy -- the great systems of Sartre or the phenomenologlsts, the work of Wittgenstein or analytical or common language philosophy — alongside which one could still distinguish that quite different discourse of the other academic disciplines — of political science, for example, or sociology, or literary criticism. Today, we have a kind of writing called "theory" which 1s all or none of those things at once. This new kind of discourse, generally associated with France and so-called French theory, 1s becoming widespread and marks the end of philosophy as such. [77]

As Hal Foster points out, one may ask whether the work of

Foucault, or Said, or Jameson himself -- or, certainly, Rosalind

Krauss — constitutes philosophy, history, social theory, or perhaps political science; not to mention linguistics, psychoanalysis, and, of course, their actual operative format, criticism.

As the location of all knowledge and, Indeed, structure, of all cultural knowledge 1s appropriated by language and criticism, the

"death" of philosophy and the academy 1s accompanied by the "death" of photography and of all the visual arts. Any meaning or

Information which seeing can provide must, by professional flat of philosophy's unconditional appropriation by writing, be Ungual 1n nature, not visual. The sight of a child's tears or the photo of an 115 unidentified dead body 1s forbidden to provide us with any

Information or Insight unless translated Into captions or analyzed by a literary critic 1n terms metaphoric of writing. The Holy Grail of revealed truth has been found; Its Name 1s Writing.

Needless to say, critical enthusiasm for this position 1s considerable. The various ramifications of 1t are gleefully expounded In Innumerable artic le s 1n October, Exposure, and

Afterimage. Since the critics themselves are the gatekeepers of criticism, any change 1n this situation 1s unlikely 1n the near future; criticism 1s unlikely to reject Its own apotheosis.

It Is In Its collusion, Its complicity, with the "linguistic turn" of professional criticism that Rosalind Krauss's tender, obsessive regard for the photographic medium manages to become, 1n effect, ant1-photograph1c. When the visual dies as valid eplstemologlcal source, photography's demise 1s automatic; 1t follows ;

Inevitably from criticism's consignment of philosophy, the visual arts, and all the separate specialties of Modern art and science, to a potters field of disused ep1stemolog1es.^®

A small matter, perhaps. Except, as Jonathan Green has written: "What Is fundamentally 1n question . . . 1s the source of knowledge 1n the modern world."^ 116

FOOTNOTES: CHAPTER IV

(1) Hal Foster, ed., from his Preface to The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, (Port Townsend, Wash., Bay Press, 1083), pp. 1x-xv1.

(2) Ibid., p. xl.

(3) Ibid., p. x ll.

(4) Roland Barthes, "The Death of theAuthor," and "From Work to Text," Image-Muslc-Text, (New York,H111 SWang, 1977).

(5) Jacques Derrida, trans. Alan Bass, Writing and Difference, (Chicago, Univ. of Chicago, 1978).

(6) For useful commentary on Bartheslan and Derrldean deconstruction, see:

Christopher Norris, The Deconstructlve Turn: essays In the rhetoric of philosophy, (Hew York, Metheun, 1984), chs. 1 and 7. See also:

Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction, (Minneapolis, Univ. of Minn. Press, 1§83), esp. ch. 4. See also:

Suresh Raval, M etacriticism, (Athens, Univ. of Georgia Press, 1981), esp. ch. 7.

(7) Jurgen Habermas, "Modernity — An Incomplete Project," In Hal Foster, Anti-Aesthetic, supra, (footnote 1), pp. 3-15.

(8) Jean-Franco1s Lyotard, trans. Regis Durand, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Manchester, 1984), esp. p p t t p b t : ------

(9) Frederick Jameson, "Postmodernism and Consumer Society," Foster, Ant1-Aesthet1c, supra, (footnote 1), pp. 111-125.

(10) Terry Eagleton, Against The Grain: Selected Essays. (London, Verso1, 1986), p. 13l ff.

(11) Ibid., chs. 6, 7, 9. 117

Craig Owens, "The Discourse of Others: Feminists and Postmodernism," 1n Foster, Ant1-Aesthet1c, supra, (footnote 1), pp. 57-82.

Kenneth Frampton, "Towards a C ritical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance," In Foster, Anti- Aesthetic. supra, (footnote 1), pp. 16-30.

Rosalind Krauss, "Sculpture 1n the Expanded Field," October 8, (Spring, 1979), reprinted 1n Foster, Anti-Aesthetic, supra, (footnote 1), pp. 31-42.

Douglas Crimp, "On the Museum's Ruins," October 13, (Summer, 1980), revised and reprinted 1n Foster, Anti-Aesthetlc, supra, (footnote 1), pp. 43-56.

Foster, Anti-Aesthetic, supra, (footnote 1), "Preface," pp. 1x- xv1.

Derrida, Writing and Difference, (footnote 5), supra, p. 281.

See Eagleton, Literary Theory, (footnote 6), supra, ch. 4, for an extended treatment of this point.

Ibid., p. 96 ff.

Ibid., ch. 3.

See Rosalind Krauss, The O riginality of The Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, (Cambridge, MIT Press, 1985), p. 5.

Umberto Eco, "Innovation and Repetition: Between Modern and Post-Modern Aesthetics," Daedalus 114, no. 2, (Fall, 1985), pp. 161-184.

Jean Baudrlllard, trans. Rosalind Krauss and Annette Michel son, October 20, (Spring, 1982).

Jean Baudrlllard, "The Precession of the Simulacrum," Art & Text no. 11, (Sept. 1983), pp. 3-47, reprinted 1n: Brian Wallis, eds., Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation, (Boston, Godlve, 1n cooperation with the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York), pp. 253-282.

Abigail Solomon-Godeau, "Photography After Art Photography," 1n WalHs, Art After Modernism, (footnote 24), supra, pp. 82- 83. 118

(26) Foster, Ant1-Aesthet1c, (footnote 1), supra, p. x and p. 112.

(27) Eaqleton, Literary Theory, (footnote 6), supra, ch. 5, esp. pp.

164 f T .

(28) For example, see:

Douglas Crimp, "Pictures," October 8, (Spring, 1979), pp. 75- 88. See also:

Rosalind Krauss, "A Note on Photography and the Slmu'lacral," October 31, (Winter, 1984), pp. 34-49. See also:

Michael Starenko, "Postmodernism as Brlcolage: or, Can Cindy Sherman Act?", Exposure 21:2, (Summer, 1983), pp. 20-23.

(29) 611les Deleuze, "Plato and the Simulacrum," trans. Rosalind Krauss, October 27, (Winter, 1983), pp. 45-56.

(30) Ibid., pp. 47-48.

(31) Ibid.

(32) Ibid., p. 52.

(33) Ibid.

(34) Ibid , p. 54.

(35) Jean Baudrlllard, "Precession," (footnote 24), supra.

(36) Ibid., p. 253.

(37) Ibid., pp. 252-254.

(38) Ibid., p. 253.

(39) Ibid., p. 256.

(40) Ibid., pp. 261-262.

(41) Ibid., p. 279.

(42) Ibid., pp. 269-270.

(43) Ibid., pp. 270-275. 119

Solomon-Godeau, "After Art Photography," (footnote 25), supra, p. 76.

Foster, Ant1-Aesthet1c, (footnote 1), supra, p. xv.

Ibid., p. xv1.

Hal Foster, "Re: Post," in Wallis, Art After Modernism, (footnote 24), supra, p. 196.

Ibid., pp. 196-197.

Ibid., p. 196.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Gennan Ideology, ed. C. J. Arthur, (New York International, 1970), pp. 4b-48 (written 1845-46).

Crimp, "On the Museum's Ruins," (footnote 15), supra, p. 43.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 45.

Ibid., p. 47.

Ibid., p. 49.

Norris, Deconstructlve Turn, (footnote 6), supra.

Crimp, "On the Museum's Ruins," (footnote 15), supra, p. 50-51.

Ibid., p. 51.

Ibid., p. 50.

Rosalind Krauss, The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, (Cambridge, HIT Press, 1985).

Krauss, "Sculpture 1n the Expanded Field," Originality, (footnote 60), supra, pp. 276-290.

Krauss, "In the Name of Picasso," Originality, (footnote 60), supra, pp. 23-41.

Rosalind Krauss, "A Note on Photography and the Slmulacral," October 31, (Winter, 1984), pp. 34-49. 120

Rosalind Krauss, "Photography's Discursive Spaces," O riginality, (footnote 60), supra, pp. 131-150.

Rosalind Krauss, "Notes on the Index: Part II," O riginality, (footnote 60), supra, pp. 210-220.

Rosalind Krauss, "Notes on the Index, Part I,"Originality, (footnote 60), supra, pp. 202-206.

Rosalind Krauss, "The Originality of the Avant-Garde," O riginality, (footnote 60), supra, pp. 167-170.

October 33, (Summer, 1985), pp. 31-72.

Rosalind Krauss, "The Photographic Conditions of Surrealism," Original1ty, (footnote 60), supra, pp. 105-107.

Ibid., p. 109.

Ibid., p. 115.

Baudrillard, Precession, (footnote 24), supra.

Krauss, Original1ty, (footnote 60), supra, p. 5.

Krauss, "In the Name of Picasso," Original1ty, (footnote 60), supra, pp. 38-39.

Frltjoe Capra, The Tao of Physics, (New York, Bantam, 1976).

Norris, Deconstructlve Turn, (footnote 6), supra, passim.

Jonathan Green, American Photography: A Critical History, 1945 to the Present, (New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1984), p. 199.

My discussion of Poststructuralism here 1s limited to an analytical exposition; I do not here have space to attempt a refutation. However, the reader Interested In a skeptical reaction to Krauss' attempted absorption of the pictorial Into the linguistic 1s referred to Vicki Goldberg's review of the matter, "Surrealism Refocused," 1n American Photographer, Feb. 1986, pp. 30-31. CHAPTER V

PKOTOCRITICISM AS THE POLITICS OF ICONOCLASM:

THE NEO-PLATONIC CRUSADE OF SUSAN SONTAG

Is criticism Indeed engaged 1n scrutinizing Its e lf to the point of reflecting Its own origin? — Paul de Man

Susan Sontag, an eminent c ritic of all the a rts, 1s well-known

as the author of On Photography, the 1973 polemic which condemned,

point by vitriolic point, the Institution of popular photography.*

Her book, which created a memorable s t i r 1n photographic academia when originally published, 1s still the definitive ant1-photograph1c work from Its own theoretical point of view. More, It Is arguably

the original broadside In the current literary warfare of criticism

against photography.

On first reading, Sontag's position 1s complex and difficult to

pin down; as Sontag herself has said, she Hkes to contradict herself

and to "keep moving."2 On closer reading, On Photography reveals an

amalgamation of diverse theoretical and political positions; 1t

Includes Sontag's (at that time) generalized Marxist opposition to

bourgeois society; her Intense personal reaction, as a writer, to the

development of photography as a new, visual medium challenging the

121 122

critic's professional aspiration toward hegemony of writing over

seeing and of criticism over art; and a Baudelalrean personal

contempt for a "pop'1 medium which threatens the destruction of a

traditional (1n this case, literary) culture.^

As critic Jerry Badger recently observed 1n Peter Turner's book

American Images: 1945-1980, Sontag's work has never been

successfully refuted 1n print. ^ Since a comprehensive, analytical

meta-critique of On Photography has not been published, I am

Including here, 1n toto, my own dramatized critique, one which takes

the form of a play. (This play 1s, 1n turn, a "play" upon the

Perry Mason TV series and a movie: The Devil and Daniel Webster, both of which were originally sho» i decades ago on American

television.)

This play might seem frlvllous and superficial. Actually, Its

semblance of superficiality arises from Its simple exposition of the

Ideas at the core of Sontag's rhetoric. But Its playfulness 1s genuine, as befits a Postmodern expression of Barthes' "Pleasure of the Text,"5 Derrldea's shitting layers of alternative texts,® and

Eco's Postmodern neo-Baroque aesthetic of delight 1n the connolsseur- shlp of 1ntertextual1ty7

Personal biases, motivations, and professional Interests are manifest 1n Sontag's On Photography. Conceptually, they seem grounded 1n a variety of puritanical Iconoclasm: a contemporary moral Platonism which, though conceiving of reality as empirical and 123 objective rather than Ideal, 1s concerned with the propriety and the effects of the relationship between that reality and Its representa­ tion.® Photographic reality, for Sontag, 1s mere semblance or dissemblance; a false copy which imprisons the viewer In obsession with untruth, a copy whose social consequences for contemporary society are those of Plato's prisoners of the cave, prisoners doomed to a pseudoreality of projected shadows as mocking substitute for that which is real. Her prosecution of this view 1n On Photography

1s so relentless that 1t may even be called n ih ilis tic , though no such formal systematic or Intent is actually visible 1n her exposition. Hers 1s a bitterness which both serves and expresses the

Interests of that class of beings, literary critics, whose status as servant/master of the visual arts 1s ever ambiguous and problematic.

The play begins on the following page. HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS

or,

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO SUSY SUNDAY?

A One-Act, Absurdist Parody for Video

by

J. M. Pettlbone

Copyright: 1986

J. M. Pettibone 125

Written 1n the Spirit of Homage to:

George Mel1es the magician, and his primitive, absurdist photoplays.

Steven Vincent Benet and his short story, The Devil and Daniel Webster.

Susan Sontag and her book, On Photography.

Perry Mason and all the television plays of the nineteen-fifties and sixties.

Marcel Duchamp, who has shown that our understanding of Art proceeds from contemplation of the Familiar.

Characters:

The Honorable Susy Sunday, Judge, Court of the Star Chamber Video Theatre

Ms. Susy Sunday, Prosecutor

The Twelve Sundays of the Jury

B ailiff Sunday

Ms. Susy Sunday, Critic, Writer, Star Witness for the Prosecution

Photography, the Defendant ’ ' 126

Scene: The Courtroom, "Court of the Star Chamber Video Theatre"

A jury of twelve Identical persons 1s seated 1n a raised jury box to the right. At a table before the high promontory of the vacant judicial bench sits the Defendant, Photography. Beside Photography, but as far away as the table permits, 1s the Prosecutor. At left, at another table, sits the Prosecution's Star Witness, waiting to be called. In front, and below the judicial bench, 1s a small table for the Bailiff. There are no spectators or others present. The atmosphere 1s austere but surreal, as 1f 1n a photographer's dream, or a scene from "The Cabinet of Dr. Cal1gar1-" Every person 1n the courtroom, except the Defendant, wears an Identical mask.

Enter the Bailiff, who speaks.

BAILIFF: All rise!

Everyone 1n the courtroom stands, respectfully and expectantly. The Judge enters briskly, and 1s seated.

BAILIFF: Hear Ye, Hear Ye! The Supreme Tribunal of the Star

Chamber Video Theatre 1s now 1n session, the Honorable Judge Susy

Sunday presiding. Be seated!

Everyone sits.

BAILIFF: Now comes the March Hare to complain about Alice before Her Majesty, The Queen of Hearts —

THE COURT: (Angrily) Stop! Stop! That tria l 1s next week!

Get 1t together, B ailiff, you're taking up prime time! This week's

Defendant Is Photography!

BAILIFF: (Flustered) Sorry! Now comes the Prosecutor, Susy

Sunday, to present an Indictment against the Defendant, Photography, in legal language. 127

(In a rush, almost 1n one breath, and with obvious spite)

To wit: That commencing on or about the Year of Our Lord 1839, beginning 1n France but continuing and spreading throughout the civilized world 1n the time since, the Defendant, Photography, acting with gross misfeasance, malfeasance, and nonfeasance of its duty

(which duty 1s of course the accurate recording of Reality) has, with cr1m1. al negligence and malice aforethought, committed many high crimes and misdemeanors: (1) Photography has corrupted said Reality by misrepresenting Its nature to Its percelvers; it has covertly replaced said Reality with its e lf and Its Images, thereby becoming an

Impostor of the F irst Degree; (2) Photography has continually committed Theft and Robbery upon said Reality by appropriating

Reality to its own use and purposes without permission or consent;

(3) Photography has 1n the process of taking photographs committed continual and criminal Assaults upon the general body of humankind; and (4) Photography has 1n toto constituted an Aggravated Menace to health, safety, morals, sanity, and the general welfare. (Pauses for one deep breath, then continues) Ms. Prosecutor Sunday, present your case. (S1 ts, obviously out of breath). 128

PROSECUTOR: (Addressing the Court) Your Honor -- Judge Sunday,

1f I may -- I am prepared to present a detailed bill of particulars

1n support of these charges. With the Court's permission I will ask that this bill, which constitutes the Indictment 1n Its entirety, be expertly presented to the Star Chamber by this week's Star Witness, none other than the noted writer and critic, Susy Sunday. Please proceed, Ms. Sunday. (Ms. Sunday rises and prepares to address the

Court).

THE COURT: (Interjecting, approvingly) Well, well! I recall,

Prosecutor Sunday, that I ju st this morning asked you, "Whatever happened to Susy Sunday?" I see you took the hint, for here she 1s!

Nice work! Proceed!

SUNDAY: (Rattling papers, and adjusting eyeglasses on her mask, speaks with evident self-consciousness) Your Honor -- Judge Sunday,

Ms. Prosecutor Sunday, and Sundays of the Jury: I have known the

Defendant, Photography, quite well for some years. I have personally sought Its assistance 1n taking pictures and I have done a good deal of lite ra ry research on Its historical background as well as Its contemporary activities. I have personally observed the Defendant commit the various crimes set forth 1n the following Indictment, which Ms. Prosecutor Sunday has asked me to read. (Parenthetically,

I might mention that these crimes are also described 1n detail and with enlightening case histories 1n Susan Sontag's On Photography, which some here may be fam iliar with and which can of course be 129 purchased at your local bookstore. Thank you.) (Clears throat) Now then, the Defendant is Indicted as follows:

Count I: Photography keeps humankind confined, without due process of law, 1n "Plato's Cave," reveling 1n mere Images, and hiding from

Reality. Humankind has come to prefer the Image to the referent — the counterfeit to the genuine -- und 1s thus enticed Into complicity

1n metaphysical Crimes against Nature

Count I I : Photography causes us to delude ourselves that we can hold the whole world 1n our heads as an anthology of Images, that we can appropriate the world by collecting photographs. This 1s madness!

(Waving arms, for theatrical effect) A trip around the world 1s 1n the traveling, not 1n our snapshots. Is this not so?

Count I I I : (Speaks with evident agitation) Photography furnishes evidence for the control records of repressive bureaucracies. Mug shots, police surveillance photos, auto-accident and murder-v1ct1m evidence pictures all are closing 1n on us like the societies that use them. Is this not more criminal than crime Itself?

Count IV: Photography as an Interpersonal process 1s Inherently assaultive. (Agitation Increases) Every photograph 1s an aggression; 1t 1s a visual theft that misappropriates an Image, that robs Its subject of privacy. The camera 1s a phallic Instrument of visual rape, a blunt instrument of sublimated murder. When we photograph we are "armed with a camera," we "aim," "load," and 130

"shoot" to "capture" Images. Need I say more? (Pauses, calms self down by slowly pouring and drinking a glass of water)

Count V: (Proceeds slowly, deliberately, with obvious attempt at self control) Under the false pretense of a rational process,

Photography 1s an Irrational set of destructive processes, to wit:

It 1s a defense against anxiety, a way of keeping busy unproductlvely, an Illusory process of gaining control over a fading past and an Insecure present by preserving and collecting their

Images. And photography has become necessary for us 1n "certifying"

Reality -- we do not take pictures to remember our vacations; we go on vacations to take pictures, and the vacation will afterwards seem unreal 1f the weather stays rainy and we take no snapshots. Is the

"reality" of today's photographed wedding thought to be 1n Its actual ceremony, or 1n the album of photographs? I ask you! (Pauses, looks entreatlngly at jury for several seconds, continues slowly).

At this point, both Judge and Jury members begin to fidget 1n th eir seats. They take out -- and hide behind as they read -- huge white cards, folded 1n the middle which contain the names of photography-related magazines. These are: Afterimage, October, Exposure, San Francisco Camerawork, Life, Popular Photography, and American Photographer! The remaining jury members take out slightly smaller cards, representing books, marked "Plato," "Sekula," "Krauss," and finally, after an obvious stall followed by a great flourish, "Sunday."

After the "Sunday" book appears In the hands of the last jury member, the Judge leads all those 1n the courtroom, except Defendant, 1n a few moments of polite, formal applause. 131

Count VI: (Continues, obviously pleased and encouraged) As well as a way of certifying experience, contemporary Images are a means of rejecting 1t. We have become jaded, photographically alienated; we refuse to consider the actuality of things that we have seen too many photographs of. Photos of crime victims and war victims simply Inure us to war and to crime. Photography 1s no longer a record of Reality

-- 1t 1s a form of voyeurism by which we escape responsibility for the events we th rill to safely watch and safely photograph. This prevents us from changing either Reality or ourselves, and drives us to despair! Look at the suicide of U1ane Arbus! Will this also happen to us? Will Photography be the death of us all? (Pauses for effect, then continues)

Count VII: Photography destroys our ability to evaluate events; everything photographed 1s leveled Into a new, common, pseudo­ reality. Everything 1s the same when 1t Is photographed; and nothing

1s real until it 1s photographed. How can we make sense out of a

"reality" consisting only of stacks of pictures? Are we losing our minds? (Raises arms 1n a gesture of hopelessness)

Count VIII: Photography 1s used by some of us as magic, as a tallsmanlc process by which we "penetrate" the object to an "Inner, fuller, mystical reality." A tree 1s not a tree, 1t is a "window" to

"treeness." I ask you, 1s this... (Slows down, stops temporarily,

1n fascinated attention to the behavior of the Judge, whose head has started to bob up again, wobble, then sink slowly down again, as she 132 struggles unsuccessfully to avoid staying asleep. Sunday then continues, warily) sense, or nonsense?

Count IX: Photography arouses passion for the unreal. We call up our dates for the evening and cancel out so that we can stay home with our Playboy and Playglrl magazines. Good Lord! Is no aspect of

Reality still sacred? (Sighs wearily, then starts again).

Count X: Photography ruins our rest. (In Ironic counterpoint, Judge begins to snore loudly; 1n response to this, Sunday gives a sarcastic aside) Well, for most of us, anyway. . . (Sunday then continues address to jury) It permits us to drag the work ethic Into our leisure -- we frantically take pictures on Sunday afternoon, pretending to ourselves we are relaxing, are doing nothing.

Photography thus contravenes the ancient wisdom of the Sabbath.

(Pauses as Judge snorts, then stops snoring. Sunday resumes, delivers a summary) In brief, Photography -- the Defendant 1n this case — has ruined life 1n our times. It has polluted our real world with Imitations of reality, with an ersatz environment of Images.

(Pauses again) Your Honor, the Prosecution rests. (Sits, exhausted).

THE COURT: (Startled awake by loud applause from the jury)

Thank you, Ms. Sunday. Well stated, I must say. You are as fine an

Expert Witness as you are Prosecutor, Judge, Jury, and Bailiff. We couldn't have said it better, ourselves.

WITNESS: (Modestly) Thank you, Your Honor. 133

THE COURT: (Smugly) Not at all. You may step down. B ailiff

Sunday, please proceed.

(The Witness retires to her seat at the table at left. The bored B ailiff stands up slowly, then sing-songs her words)

Next call the Defendant, Photography, who will represent itself

1n this cause. Defendant, proceed.

Photography arises and hobbles to the front of the courtroom, near the witness stand. It stands on legs which are thin and stiff like those of a tripod. Its appearance 1s difficult to describe 1n words; only a visual Image would do. Its complexion -- what can be seen -- 1s 18% grey. Its eyes have a creative glimmer; but they also have a certain technical, twin-lens-reflex look. Its head 1s partly covered by a huge black cloth which drapes down over Its entire body. Its speech 1s a curious, mach1ne-Hke, hissing

whisper, somethi• j like the "ca-shoo, ca-shoo" of a motorized shutter.

THE COURT: By the way, Photography, we're surprised to see you willing to testify. You do have quite a reputation as a non-verbal medium!

PHOTOGRAPHY: Perhaps, Your Honor, pictures may speak, ju st as words may picture. And 1n these Post-Modern times, the boundaries between all the media are fading away.

THE COURT: Good point. Now, B ailiff, you may swear the witness.

BAILIFF: Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you Edward Weston? 134

PHOTOGRAPHY: (Squirming) What 1s Truth? What 1s Reality?

What 1s an Equivalent? Rosalind Krauss says everything is the same,

mere Simulacrum . . . (Speech tra ils off Into silent thought).

THE COURT: (Interrupts, Irritated) Come now, Defendant, let's

get on with 1t. If you have a problem with the oath, I'll put it

another way: You aren't going to He, are you?

PHOTOGRAPHY: (Enthusiastically) Well, now that you mention it,

Henry Peach Robinson said . . .

THE COURT: Enough! We may have read about that In Susan

Sontag, not to mention Beaumont Newhall, Naomi Rosenblum, etc., etc.

Anyway, please present your case. It'll soon be lunchtime, and I

have an appointment to have my p o rtrait taken. (Musingly) It will be just the thing right here behind me on the wall, don't you think?

Perhaps there between the two flags . . . (Forgetting about the tr ia l, the Judge swivels her chair to regard the wall and Its possible portrait space).

PHOTOGRAPHY: (Embarrassed) Very well, Your Honor, I'll proceed. My defense will rest entirely on the testimony of one witness. I wish to call and cross-examine the Star Witness for the

Prosecution, Ms. Susy Sunday.

THE COURT: (Startled, swiveling around suddenly to face the courtroom) Really? I hope you know what you're doing. I'm reminded of the saying that "He who represents himself has a fool for a client and a fool for a lawyer." But, proceed. And "Lots of luck." 135

BAILIFF: (Rising) Call Ms. Susy Sunday. Please stand. Thank

you. Do you (glancing sideways at the Defendant) swear to tell the

whole truth, nothing but the truth, etc., etc.? (Then, 1n a nasty

tone) Even 1f the Defendant doesn't?

SUNDAY: (Raising right hand, and answering 1n haughty tones)

Of course. At least ^ still know what Truth and Reality are. Make

no mistake about that!

BAILIFF: (Indicates support for the witness by an exaggerated

courtly bow) Very well. Be seated.

PHOTOGRAPHY: (Eagerly, aggressively, with obvious relish for

what 1s to come) Now then, Ms. Sunday, I'm certain you're no

relation to anyone I know. However, the critical fervor of your

writings leads me to ask 1f you might be related to the legendary

religious evangelist, Billy Sunday. Are you?

SUNDAY: (S tiffly) Not that I'm aware of, I'm sure.

PHOTOGRAPHY: Pardon me for asking, please. And pardon me, too,

1f I cannot resist asking whether you are related to, or are, yourself, another critic of similar name and parallel opinion.

Are you perhaps Susan Sontag, 1n deliberately transparent disguise?

SUNDAY: I'm not really sure. As you may have noticed, 1n this

courtroom Identities tend to become confused and melded. As the

Lacanlan Post-Structuralist critics might say, none of us are really

Self, ana all of us are only Other. But . . .that's the kind of obfuscation Sontag herself might indulge 1n. I, on the other hand, 136

am a woman of plain words. Tell me, did you fall to understand even

one small word, or single Idea, within my bill of particulars? In

any of the counts?

PHOTOGRAPHY: (Sadly) No. It was all devastatlngly clear.

SUNDAY: And did you find your mind wandering from the charges?

Were you distracted from the logic by elegant, genteel, exquisitely mellifluous literary phrases?

PHOTOGRAPHY: (Snorting) Hardly! As you yourself ju st said,

Ms. Sunday, you're a woman of plain words. Affectations of style have nothing to do with the effectiveness of your delivery, and your reputation and cred ib ility as a c ritic are certainly not founded on a personal romance with the rhythm and the sound of words. Actually, you talk like a lawyer -- and you will forgive me 1f that's not quite a compliment.

SUNDAY: Of course. And, speaking of affectation, does my bill of particulars come couched 1n elitist critical jargon? Have I talked about hermeneutics, or transcendance, or Baudelaire? Plain or fancy English aside, have I said anything 1n French?

PHOTOGRAPHY: No, to all questions.

SUNDAY: Have you the Impression that I attempt to establish a mystique of Infallibility so overwhelming 1t is actually reinforced, not destroyed, by an Inconsistency of critical arguments? Have I said — or demonstrated -- that "I like being provocative -- not because I like to shock people, but because I like to keep myself 1n 137 motion, I like to contradict myself?" Do you claim that, 1n any sense or In any Instance, my bill of particulars Is a flaunting of mystique, style, or contradiction?

PHOTOGRAPHY: (Chastened) No, no, certainly not. But . . . but . . .

SUNDAY: (Interrupting, speaking sternly) No buts about 1t ; In any respect beyond my exposition of the core of Ideas within

On Photography, you have no grounds at all upon which to Identify me as Susan Sontag, disguised or otherwise. (Angrily) I therefore defy you, Photography, to continue to stand there and Imply that I, Susy

Sunday, am not myself!

PHOTOGRAPHY: I withdraw the question, with profound apologies.

(Aside to audience) In other words, I'm sorry I brought 1t up.

(Continues, to witness) But tell me, Ms. Sunday -- and, for the record, I hereby stipulate that 1s who you are, Ms. Sunday -- why have you brought this Indictment against me now, almost a decade after these allegations appeared 1n On Photography? Personally, I'd prefer to let sleeping dogs He.

SUNDAY: AHA!' Since you've accused me of talking like a lawyer,

I might as well remind you that your wish to "let sleeping dogs lie" in this matter Is, legally, an admission contrary to interest and, as such, discredits your position.

THE COURT: (Warmly) Well said, Ms. Sunday. Somehow, I knew that's just what you were going to do. My empathy with you 1s 138

amazing! But, let's move along here. Despite your legal one-ups-

personshlp, Ms. Sunday, you have not answered the question. Whyhave you brought this up, after all these years?

SUNDAY: (Speaking with self-confidence and precision) F irst,

because I think Sontag 1s right. Second, because I suspect no

metacrltlcal treatment of Sontag's On Photography — whether

supportive or hostile -- has ever dealt with Its basic notions 1n the

plain words and bedrock logic which I, Susy Sunday, try to use and to encourage. Third, no one has yet successfully refuted Sontag's

Ideas, 1n any terms, at least in print. This was recently pointed out by my fellow critic Jerry Badger, 1n his essay 1n Peter Turner's

1985 book American Images: 1945-1980. It seemed to me, on reading

Badger's words, that It's high time to get to the heart of the matter. So, I accepted the challenge and I presented the Indictment.

And here we are .... Now, let's see what Photography has to say for Itself. Does 1t have a defense?

THE COURT: We shall see, and soon. Photography, continue with your cross-examination.

PHOTOGRAPHY: Thank you, Your Honor. Now, Ms. Sunday .. . as a w riter of substantial reputation, do you view Photography as some sort of demonic force, or as simply an alternative visual symbology that competes with the written symbology of the Writing profession?

SUNDAY: Given only those two choices, I'll say merely an alternative symbology. 139

PHOTOGRAPHY: Very well. Now, then, I understand you also photograph a bit. Correct?

SUNDAY: (Uncomfortably) Yes.

PHOTOGRAPHY: So you are a practitioner of both symbologles!

Well then, 1n Count I of your Indictment you charge that I keep people hiding 1n "Plato's Cave," so to speak; that I distract them from Reality as they "revel 1n mere Images of truth." Tell me, did you personally attend any sessions of Congress this year?

SUNDAY: No.

PHOTOGRAPHY: Did you read about them 1n the papers?

SUNDAY: Yes, of course.

In the jury box, the members of the jury raise their magazines and books, and begin to read them ostentatiously, as 1f to signal unanimous support for the witness. (As the trial progresses, the various jury members will slowly fall asleep, one by one dropping their books and magazines as they do so.)

PHOTOGRAPHY: Aha! You were content to experience things symbolically through "mere" written Images of Reality. Say no more!

(Pauses) Now then, let's move on to Count II. Using vacation photography as evidence, you allege that I delude folks into trying to appropriate Reality by collecting It 1n photographic bits and pieces: specifically, your Indictment alleges we "appropriate the world by collecting photographs." Stipulated. But tell me, do you know whether traveling was at all fashionable before I was born 1n

1839 (or thereabouts -- I absolutely refuse to get Into the paternity

Issue.) If travel was indeed 1n fashion, why was 1t that people went 140 to all that trouble — conditions were horrible 1n the old ships and stagecoaches, you know. Do you suppose we might say that people went to different exotic places to collect the experiences? Isn't that somewhat sim ilar to your description of Photography as an acquisitive activity?

SUNDAY: (Reluctantly) You could say that — you could put 1t that way, I suppose.

PHOTOGRAPHY: Thank you, I did put 1t that way. Now 1n the same vein -- while we're on the subject of collecting Images of Reality -- do you object to collecting? Do you yourself collect books?

SUNDAY: (Warily) I have a few.

PHOTOGRAPHY: And do you fla tte r yourself that this collection has anything to do with Reality?

SUNDAY: Well, I might say that .... (trails off)

PHOTOGRAPHY: Well, "yes" or "no?"

SUNDAY: (Submissively) Yes.

PHOTOGRAPHY: I knew 1t. Now then -- (Stopping for a glass of water) — now we are ready for Count III. There you charge me with furnishing evidence and data for the control systems of repressive bureaucracies. Tell me, do you think police files and tax records rely more on written words, or on photographs? A person may have a record "as long as your arm," as they say, but how many "mug shots" are kept on file? One or two, perhaps? And 1f surveillance photograph* 1s used, 1n what percentage of cases might this be? Are 141 you prepared to tell me that the ordinary run of garden-varlety criminal, who 1s of course the subject of voluminous written records,

1s routinely followed around and photographed 1n dally life? Or 1s this ju st done 1n rare cases? Wei 1 ?

SUNDAY: No comment.

THE COURT: Please try to answer the question, Ms. Sunday.

PHOTOGRAPHY: No need -- thank you, Your Honor -- I will withdraw the question. (Aside to audience) But I think my point has been made. (Continues, to witness) Now then, let's get to the really juicy stuff, shall we?

SUNDAY: (Sarcastically) I can scarcely wait.

PHOTOGRAPHY: With your permission, then, Ms. Sunday, I will refer to your allegation 1n Count IV to the effect that I,

Photography, am a form of sublimated murder; that there 1s always something predatory about taking a picture. Tell me, do you think of yourself as a murderer whenever you take a picture? Do you yourself feel all that terribly violated whenever someone else takes your picture for the newspapers, or for the jacket portrait of one of your books? And, to put the shoe on the other foot, might a photographer not feel "murdered" when you write that way about what he or she does? How does the shoe fe^l on your foot, Ms. Sunday? Does 1t pinch? (Stops, wiping brow)

THE COURT: Oh, come now, Defendant; a personal outburst is not appropriate here -- but that's what always happens when defendants 142 represent themselves. (Smugly) A layman -- or, 1n your case, a lay-whatever-you-are — doesn't know the rules of trial procedure, no

Indeed! But, 1n any case, you have asked a U st of questions, not one; and the witness couldn't possibly know where to start. Please rephrase your questions, one by one.

PHOTOGRAPHY: No need, Your Honor. I'll withdraw the questions; but I'd consider 1t a personal favor 1f the witness (aside to audience) and the jury and the Court (then continues, to the Court) would give them some thought. To press on, then . . . Concerning

Count V, you charge that I cause people to try to control a distant past and an Insecure present by solidifying time 1n collectible

Images. Tell me, do you own the "Hundred Great Books" of lite ra ry classics, sometimes said to be the very core of Western cultural history?

SUNDAY: I believe I ju st may have those books on hand.

PHOTOGRAPHY: Have you read them all? Are you always a reader, or sometimes ju st a collector?

SUNDAY: I've not read all of them -- to be quite candid.

PHOTOGRAPHY: Candid Indeed! Now you're talking like a camera!

(Hurriedly, turning to the Judge) My apologies for the bad pun, Your

Honor. (The Judge leans far out over the bench, shaking her finger

In silen t reprimand.) ..defendant then continues) But to get on with

1t, you allege 1n Count VI that I, Photography, cause people to refuse experience, to become uninvolved, to observe and experience 143 vicariously from the outside without personally coming to grips with

Reality or becoming emotionally Involved. You use the example of

Diane Arbus, who photographed so-called "freaks." Now then, If you yourself had written about Arbus, would you have found yourself tempted to take personal action on behalf of the "freaks" she photographed? Would you have successfully kept 1n touch with your own compassion? Or would you, perhaps, unfeelingly dismiss both the photographer and her "freaks" as -- 1n the words of Susan Sontag --

"Arbus and the Halloween set?"

SUNDAY: (Uncomfortably) I seem to recall thinking 1n some such language, but ....

PHOTOGRAPHY: (Triumphantly) You have just answered the question, thank you! So, let's move to Count VII. You say that I,

Photography, am a leveler; that I level events Into one plane of

Reality when photographed and Into another level (un-Real1ty) when not. (Pauses, suddenly wheels around to extend arm and point finger

1n Witness's face) Would you care to say whether the same thing happens with Writing? Is there some connection between levels of

Reality and Writing 1n such expressions as "I won't believe 1t until

I see 1t 1n writing" or "There 1t Is, 1n black and white?" How about

"All I know Is what I read 1n the papers" or "Make 1t official -- send me a memo?" Do you feel these expressions Imply any sort of two-level stratification of Reality by Writing?

SUNDAY: Perhaps. At least to some extent. 144

PHOTOGRAPHY: (With exaggerated courtesy) Thank you! Next, let's talk about Count VIII. You have often Implied -- I'll try to correctly remember a quote -- "Photographs . . . are Incitements to re v erie .... The sense of the unattainable that can be evoked by photographs feeds directly Into the erotic feelings of those for whom d esirab ility 1s enhanced by distance." Tell me, Ms. Sunday, does such eroticism have any similarity to the literary tradition of unrequited love found, for Instance, 1n the Gothic novel? And, Isn't the distanced budding of romance through love le tte rs a common lite ra ry theme? Have you not heard 1t said that "absence makes the heart grow fonder?"

SUNDAY Well, now that you mention 1t . . . .

PHOTOGRAPHY: Thank you, again. Now, let's continue -- we're almost through, so let's get 1t over with. Now then, Number IX states that I, Photography, arouse passion and compassion for the unreal as well as for the real. Stipulated, I'm sure. But -- as usual, here -- I would like to compare Photography with Writing. I'm sure you personally have never forsaken a social evening to stay home reading Playglrl, but I wonder 1f you've ever preferred to ju st curl up 1n bed with an old-fashioned, unillustrated book. Have you? Hmm?

SUNDAY: (Reluctantly) Perhaps. Who hasn't?

PHOTOGRAPHY: Thank you for making my point. (Looks at jury members, pauses for effect, then resumes) Finally, we come to Count

X, which charges me, Photography, with dragging the work ethic Into 145 our leisure time and permitting us to keep compulsively busy so we won't — I suppose -- feel guilty. Agreed that this happens.

However, have you ever heard of anyone puttering at home on Sundays?

Working 1n the garden all weekend? Spending quiet leisure hours frantically "catching up on your reading?" How did you keep busy la st weekend?

SUNDAY: (Snappishly) As a matter of fact, I was reading a good book -- It's called On Photography! Now may I step down, or 1s there more torture?

PHOTOGRAPHY: (Reassuringly) In a moment. (Pauses, looks down, consults notes) Now, (looks up, continues slowly, 1n a slightly louder voice, and with heavy emphasis) here 1s the essence of my defense. (Turning to the Court) Your Honor, I submit that the testimony of the Prosecution's own Expert Witness, Ms. Sunday, provides every reason to consider Photography merely the equal of her own profession, Writing; that Photography 1s no more a uniquely villainous symbolic process than Writing Itself. I submit -- very respectfully, Your Honor -- that Ms. Sunday's Indictment Indicts only

Itself. It displays her own jealous, professional competition with a new, visually symbolic language, Photography, that may now be assuming the same stature 1n human affairs as Writing, a stature proven by the comparably self-deluding ways 1n which both Writing and

Photography may cause human beings to behave. Both of us --

Photography and Writing -- enable people to explore Reality and to 146

hide from 1t, to reject 1t and to collect it, to fragmentize 1t and

to abstract It, and even to go beyond 1t -- 1n conceptual or even

mystical analysis -- to attempt to contact a "reality" beyond.

(Continues, voice trembling with emotion) Both enable humankind to

capture the present and to memorialize the past, to become shocked by

Reality's freshness or jaded by its repetition!

(Pauses, wipes brow) I will conclude, Your Honor, by quoting

Marshall McLuhan about "pseudoevents," a label that he applies to the

"new" media (Including Photography) because of th eir power to give

new patterns to our lives, a power once f e lt 1n the "old" media

(Including Writing). McLuhan sums up my position beautifully, Your

Honor, when he says 1n his essay on the photograph that "A! 1 media

exist to Invest our lives with artificial perception and arbitrary

values."

(Stops, turning again to the witness) Now then, Ms. Sunday, I

think I should get back to you. I've shown, I believe, that Writing and Photography are siblings under the skin; neither one 1s more

mischievous, let alone criminal, than the other. All that now

remains 1s to consider why Photography 1s used 1n the ways you outline -- I hereby stipulate that 1t so used -- and to establish

whether there are any options. Let's hypothesize that both

Photography and Writing, and 1n some cases other symbolic experience

syutems, such as music or computers or painting or TV -- 1n fact, any of the systems of symbolic communication we define as arts and treat 147 as commodities -- may all permit humans to use them 1n acquisitive, aggressive, escapist ways. If they do so, then the whole process must be part of the natural psychology of the human animal. If we deplore this process, are we not deploring human nature -- perhaps the most fruitless of pursuits?

(Pauses, takes a deep breath, and prepares to change the line of argument) But, just a moment. Before you answer any of that, Ms.

Sunday, le t me put the whole thing 1n what I can't help but conclude

1s Its most vital context: Would you not agree that, 1f Photography

1s some sort of eidetic opiate of the masses, 1s 1t not, perhaps, because the harried masses need one? Are they to be forbidden the transcendental experience of art, of photographic creativity, simply because you, as a c ritic , see Photography as a "variety of pornographic Imagination" that views the world as a "brothel without walls?" That 1s precisely the Impression I got from your Indictment,

Ms. Sunday. (Pauses for another glass of water, drinks 1t with a flourish).

SUNDAY: I couldn't have said it better myself.

PHOTOGRAPHY: (Drily) I appreciate the humor. Now, let's talk about alienation. I must accuse you, Ms. Sunday, of really — 1f I may use that slippery word -- being alienated fully as much as those of us who make or view photographs may sometimes be. Are you not a hostile critic of societies as much as of the arts? What is the difference, 1n act1on-1mpl1cat1on, between your own position on 148

Photography and the puritanical censorship of the Chinese, as Sontag describes 1t 1n her book? Is your position on Photography anything more than your own style of radical willfulness, your own noisy aesthetic of silence? (Leaning toward the witness, preparing to thrust a final knife of courtroom rhetoric) Tell me, Susy, why don't you love poor old Photography anymore? If you do love me, why do you deny me your affections as a legitimate art form and a useful medium of communication? If you love me, why do you picture me as a worthless villain? Can 1t be that you're jealous of my success?

SUNDAY: (Emotionally) I do love you! I'm addicted to you, as

I've said publicly on several occasions! I don't care to say that I could possibly be jealous of you as a competing medium, and I won't make any other comment! Even If I'm jailed for contempt!

PHOTOGRAPHY: (Mumbled aside to audience) Fat chance.

(Continues, to witness, speaking louder) But, here's another question you may not care to answer. What would you have us do to stop the "crime-wave" constituteo by photography, as you seem to consider 1t ? Does the problem call tor government censorship and restriction of the arts, Including Photography? Shall we establish a

Marxist state and enforce Socialist Realism? Shall we simply all stop looking at photographs, as a protest, as we used to boycott lettuce? Shall we establish a Critocratlc government, ruled by a

Philosopher Queen? If that happens, will the Queen outlaw Writing as well as Photography, since 1t commits the same crimes? 149

SUNDAY: (In a fog, answers slowly) You've asked a great many questions. Important questions, which deserve some thought. An essay, perhaps . . . Let me make some notes . . . I wish Susan Sontag were here now . . . Where will all this lead? . . . Perhaps the ancient struggle for moral and professional supremacy, which has gone on between writing and the arts from Plato to Barthes, should be declared a draw . . . I just don't know . . .

PHOTOGRAPHY: Enough. Thank you, Ms. Sunday. I'm sorry to have put you through this, but you must admit you have made things a bit difficult for me, too. In any case, thank you for playing, so magnanimously, the w illing victim 1n this l i t t l e courtroom skit. The

Defense rests, Your Honor.

THE COURT: (Peremptorily) Obviously nothing will do here but a directed verdict. Find Defendant Photography Not Guilty. The Jury

1s dismissed, with thanks. The audience 1s reminded to tune to this same Video docket next week, when our feature presentation will take us Behind the Looking Glass, for the tria l of Alice. (Aside to

B ailiff) Make a note of that, dunce! (Turns to courtroom and bangs gavel sharply) Court's adjourned!

BAILIFF: All rise!

The Judge briskly re tire s from the bench. The Members of the Jury, who had all fallen asleep behind their open books and magazines (some while reading the text and some while regarding the pictures) rise wearily, stretch their arms, and begin to straggle out. The Defendant, Photography, walks out with expert witness Sunday, and with Prosecutor Sunday, arm 1n arm. 150

FOOTNOTES: CHAPTER V

(1) Susan^Sontag, On Photography, (New York, Farrar, Straus, Giroux,

(2) “I like being provocative — not because I like to shock people, but because I like to keep myself 1n motion, I like to contradict myself." Susan Sontag, 1974 radio Interview, ouoted on the cover of a summary of a panel on 'Implications of Sontag's View of Photography," Society for Photographic Education, 1975.

(3) See Walter Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet In the Age of High CapitalIsiiu Trans. Harry Zohn. (London, New Left Books, 19/3;.

(4) Jerry Badger, "From Humanism to Formalism," essay 1n: Peter Turner, American Images: 1945-80. 1985.

(5) Roland Barthes, "From Work to Text," trans. Stephen Heath, reprinted 1n Brian WalHs, ed., Art After Modernism, (New Mus. Contemp. Art, New York, 1964, bavld R. Godlve, Godlne Pub. Inc., Boston.) p. 174. See also comment on Barthes' 1976 volume Pleasure of the Text 1n:

Terry Eaqleton, Literary Theory, An Introduction (Minneapolis, Univ. Minn. Press, 1963) pp. 62-83.------

(6) See: Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Boss, (Chicago, Univ. Chicago, 1978), Chapter Ten.

(7) Umberto Eco, "Innovation and Repetition: Between Modern and Post-Modern Aesthetics," Daedalus 114, no. 2 (Fall 1985) pp. 161-184.

(8) Gilles DeLeuze, "Plato and the Simulacrum," trans. Rosalind Krauss. October 27, (Winter 1983), pp. 45-56. CHAPTER VI

PHOTOCRITICISM AS THE POLITICS OF CLASS STRUGGLE:

THE MARXIAN/FOUCAULTIAN CRITIQUE OF ALLAN SEKULA

I was a prisoner of . . . obvious contradiction. But I did not see 1t, I saw the world through It. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

The English photographer and critic, Peter Turner, has published a new (1985) critic a l history entitled American Images: Photography

1945-80. In the books' f ir s t Included essay "From Humanism to

Formalism: Thoughts on Post-War American Photography," c ritic Jerry

Badger wrote:

In 1973 Susan Sontag published a notable series of five articles 1n The New York Review of Books. Less than a year later, c ritic Allan Sekula followed Sontag with a similar series 1n Artforum. Their basic theme was the socio-political role of photography. Their basic dictum was bleak, harsh, and might even be considered anti- photographic. Their conclusions, and those of other meta­ commentators of the seventies, challenged the photograph's newly accepted value as a rt, and questioned Its efficacy as an Instrument of knowledge, communication, and culture. . . . Theirs was a wide ranging criticism, which has not yet been thoroughly refuted, certainly not 1n print.

Rather than a "basic" or Intrinsic hostility characterizing all photocritldsm, the hostility of criticism toward the medium of photography Its e lf 1s now a strong movement within the narrow arena of academic/intellectual photocritldsm.

151 152

Logically, a political basis for this hostility 1s found 1n a

specific, limited critical stance toward photography, a stance that

views photographs and photographic activity as the derivatively

reprehensible products of a generlcally reprehensible social order.

At this writing, the most currently prolific and Influential --

and the most ant1-photograph1c — of ant1-photograph1c critics 1s

Allan Sekula. In his recent (1984) retrospective Photography Against

the Grain: Essays and Photo Works 1973-1983, Sekula himself sets the

centerpiece of his work as a Marxist deconstruction of the photograph

as commodity:

I see my own critical project now as an attempt to understand the social character of "the traffic 1n photographs." .... the social production, circulation, and reception of photographs In a society based on commodity production and exchange. [1]

Sekula's critical writings about the photographic medium are

permeated by a larger political concern: a view of the world 1n

which a corrupt and parasitic economic system, Industrial capitalism,

spreads relentlessly over the earth and -- with the help of Its

captive medium and Imperialistic new language, photography --

transforms the world Into a mass-productlon, mass-consumptlon, money-

dominated, dehumanizing, capitalist megasociety whose fabric 1s, 1n

the words of Marx, a paradox of "material relations between persons

and social relations between things."2

Such is the global backdrop against which "Traffic" sets

photography's drama in the modern world; a drama whose plot, roles, 153 symbolism, meaning, and underlying functions are the Institutional expression and reinforcement of capitalist economy, Ideology, and power.

Here 1s "Traffic's" view of the photographic Image as

"discourse," or system of meaning:

This discourse . . . gives concrete form to -- thus lending both trust and pleasure to -- other discursively borne Ideologies: of "the family," of "sexuality," of "technology," of "nature," of "communications," of "history, and so on. . . . And as 1n all culture that grows from a system of oppressions, the discourses that carry the greater force 1n everyday life are those than emanate from power, that give voice to an Institutional authority. For us today, these affirmative and supervisory voices speak primarily for capital, and subordlnately for the state. [3]

From "Traffic's" perspective, the social function of the

"discourse" of photographic Imagery 1s a mystified resolution of the contradictions and tensions Inherent 1n a culture dedicated to paradox: on the one hand, to a disciplined, rational, scientific, mass technologlsm and, on the other hand, to a pleasurable, romantic,

Individualistic, and express1on1st1c notion of Art. "Traffic" expresses this reaction to such contradictions:

Here, then, at least by virtue of the need to contain the tensions Inherent 1n this paradox, 1s the site of a certain shell game, a certain dance, even a certain politics. [4]

After Marx, "Traffic" assumes all bourgeois social Institutions as superstructural manifestations of the ownership of the means of production; after Foucault 1t sees the terms of all discourse as reflective of the power relationships which form the superstructure. 154

Therefore, "Traffic" defines capitalist propaganda as the real nature of photographic discourse.

This propaganda Is seen, in "Traffic," as at its height in

Stelchen's Family of Man. "Traffic" Interprets this historic exhibit as a c a p ita list Ideological ploy, a ploy which advertised a

sentimentalized Ideal of "the bourgeois nuclear family, suggesting a globalized, utopian family album, a family romance Imposed on every corner of the earth." In "Traffic's" view, the family serves as a metaphor for a "system of [capitalist] International discipline and harmony.

"Traffic" also characterizes the true nature of photography within the emerging capitalism of the nineteenth century as

"Instrumental realism," a phrase used to mean visual documentation for purposes of social control. Under this are subsumed a

Foucaultlan army of psychiatric, criminological, law-enforcement, and

Industrial Images Inevitably marching together 1n the service of bourgeois repression.®

"The Traffic 1n Photographs" suggests the possibility, and the necessity, of political action through a new form of criticism.

However, this does not mean a merely conventional criticism addressing aesthetics, formal analysis, mimesis, Intention, or evaluation. Rather, what 1s suqgested 1s the absorption of photo- criticism Into a new union, a new synthesis, of cultural theory with a radically oppositional political challenge to the established 155 order. Consider this manifesto or the objectives of photocrltlcal theory:

. . . to Involve the practical, to help point the way to a radical, reinvented cultural practice. Other more powerful challenges to the order of monopoly capitalism need to be discovered and Invented, resistances that unite culture and politics. [7]

This theme 1s continued and expanded 1n Sekula's "Dismantling

Modernism, Reinventing Documentary (Notes on the Politics of

Representation)":

But we will also have to work toward a redefined pragmatics, toward modes of address based on a redefined pedagogy, and toward a different and significantly wider notion of audience, one that engages with the ongoing progressive struggles against the established order. [8]

I am arguing, then, for an art that documents monopoly capitalism's Inability to deliver the conditions of a fully human life, . . . we need to counterpose an active resistance, simultaneously political and symbolic, to monopoly capitalism's Increasing power and arrogance, a resistance aimed ultimately at socialist transformation. [9]

Sekula's basically ant1-photograph1c position centers 1n his

Marxist view of the photograph, 1n capitalist society, as merely an

Item of commerce, or, as he more pejoratively prefers 1t, "traffic."

The nature of the photograph as "desired Item" 1s, of course, that of something totally without strictly utilitarian "use" value.

However, his references to the "discourse of power" reveal an additional bias which Informs the antagonism of much of his work.

Based on the work of Michel Foucault, the French theorist of linguistics and cultural history, Sekula's position on all language, or "discourse," including the visual, 1s that only concepts 156

supporting the power structure of a society can become part of mass

culture and Its symbolic expression, Its "discourse."

Sekula himself has had a photo exhibit entitled "School 1s a

Factory,"10 a corollary of Foucault's view that "prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons." Such a society conducts total visual surveillance of

Industrial "prisoners" through an all-seeing medium of "Instrumental realism," the photograph. This tool, 1n Sekula's Foucaultlan thinking, enables the soclal-control agencies of capitalist society

-- the police, prisons, psychiatric facilities, courts, educational systems, etc. -- to maintain the same sort of visual oversight upon the "Inmates" of an Industrialized, capitalist society as 1s developed 1n Foucault's exposition of Jeremy Bentham's "panopticon," a prison design wherein central vision stations permit continual

Inspection by the keepers of the rings of cells encircling the outer w alls.H

Sekula also attacks the photograph 1n Its function as seductive sales-agent for the advertising media. In Sekula's view, as 1n that of many others (Including Roland Barthes and John Berger), advertising 1s the persuasive force which keeps the population of capitalist societies enslaved to a needless consumption of those economically and psychologically fetlshlzed commodities endlessly over-produced by modern capitalist industrialism.^ 157

According to Sekula, the bourgeois nuclear family 1s an

accomplice 1n this exploitation. In this view, the family serves as

an economic and soda! nucleus of human bondage to the machinery of

capitalist production and distribution. It serves also as a

sanctified metaphor and ready-made, functional model for the

expansionist projects of multi-national capitalism, a "family" of

nations enmeshed together 1n the "kinship" of common economic

slavery. Photographs (as "sentimentalizing" family snapshot and

"appropriating" travel photograph) are metaphoric links between these

discourses and, therefore, are tools of capitalist colonialism.^

Sekula's position also condemns photography as humanist

expression and record, particularly 1n journalism. In a lecture to

the beginning photography class of The Ohio State University, Sekula

has characterized the wartime photography of W. Eugene Smith as

merely promoting the Interests of an "expansionist, Imperialist

power;" 1n a lecture to one of his History of Photography classes

Sekula referred to a photograph of American soldiers picking up an abandoned baby as a "propaganda attempt to legitim ate Im perialist

killers."*4

From theoretical Marxist perspectives, these hard-edged phrases are legitimate, analytical Interpretations. Sekula's anti-humanist

Ideology 1s p artially founded upon Althusser's rejection of all

"abstract, bourgeois" humanism as an Ideological vestige of the

philosophical Idealisms of Fuerbach and Hegel. These idealisms seem 158 to have been understood by Althusser as primitive modes of thought superseded 1n Marx's dialectical materialism by a rigorous, objectlvlst, "scientific" appeal to experimental empiricism. Such mystified, abstract concepts as "man" were condemned by Althusser as actually unreal, unscientific, and dangerous 1n their potential for

Ideological corruption Into tools of bourgeois counter-revolution, a category Into which Althusser forced the antl-Stal1n1st, Marxist slogan of "Socialism with a Human Face" adopted by such revisionists as Dubchek 1n postwar Czechoslovakia. Dubchek and his partisans were on a far extreme (one opposite to that other polar extreme occupied by the writings of Althusser and Sekula) of that continuum of tension

Implied by Frederick Jameson, 1n Marxism and Form, as stretching between a "negative hermeneutic" which deconstructs Instances of

Ideological mystification, and a positive or "utopian" Impulse which

1s the keeper of the flame of Ideological desire for human fulfillment.

However, Sekula's opposition to bourgeois humanism 1s also motivated by his resistance to what he terms "aesthet1c1zat1on," the removal of political oppression from the field of the real and the political to the realm of the "beautiful." Thus transformed Into

"Art," oppression acquires a privileged distance from reality and becomes Immune to the necessity for political action.

Such a view seems based upon the Kantian view of a rt as the separation of the aesthetic from the cognitive and the purposeful 159 from the purposeless. In this paradigm, 1f an object 1s declared

"art" it 1s "beautified" by being drawn Into an aesthetic of pure form, an aesthetic outside reality. Thus rendered Impotent, 1t allegedly cannot -- by the logic of Its definition — cause real- world consequences. The antidote to such aesthet1c1zat1on 1s Implied

1n Sekula's writings: the demand for an absolute Brechtlan distancing.^

Still another source of opposition to photography, by Sekula, 1s

Its Involvement 1n the erotic objectification of women by pornographers, glamour magazines, the movie Industry, advertising, fashion, and Indeed the society as a whole. However, this Feminist

Ideology 1s subordinated to the f ;ndamentally economic determinism of his political critique.

Finally, Sekula's theoretical (and practical) opposition to photography Includes a Suassurlan presumption of the Inferiority of seeing, as compared to writing, as a valid and powerful eplstemological tool. As Jonathan Green has observed, "Both Sontag and Sekula believe 1n the superiority of the literary artist over the visual one.

Such a Ciceronian bias 1s, of course, professionally useful to the c ritic a l w riter who seeks to promulgate the dominance of the literary (one who writes) critic over the "merely" visual arts he deals with; it 1s equally useful to the essentially bourgeois

Intellectual who, classically and contemporaneously, attempts to 160 elbow his way to leadership of the proletarian class struggle. When the bourgeois critic of art and the 1ntellect1onal leader of proletarian politics are combined 1n the same person, this assumption of literary superiority over art Itself 1s doubly utilitarian.

Marx himself was known to avoid the question of the practical

Implications of his own analysis of capitalist society. Postulating an Inevitable rush of history toward the final communist "synthesis,"

Marx cautioned that planning the results of the post-revolutionary society was needless; the real Imperative for the Marxist confronting capitalist society was the "merciless criticism of everything that exists.

Perhaps 1n obedience to this dictum, Sekula makes few specific political demands beyond a "socialist transformation." Recommended tactics 1n his writings are, as quoted above, the conjunction of cultural criticism with political opposition to capitalism, the development of "new forms of pedagogy," a "reinvented [photographic] documentary," etc. Such remedies for the 111s of capitalism, are,

1n themselves, reasonably mild.

The real ethical problem with Sekula's marvelously analytical,

Incisive, and articulate writings lies less 1ri their overt demands than 1n their more subtle, but logically Inescapable Implications.

His Althusserlan contempt for all "sentimentalized, bourgeois humanism" removes all Implied constraint upon extremist social and political action, even the most violently destructive. His elaborate 161 critical project of deconstructing all the photography-related aspects of bourgeois culture leaves little of that culture beyond his analysis; while, within that analysis, his Marx1an/Foucault1an tendency toward appropriating "everything that exists" Into the

"discourses of power" dictates a fundamental political opposition, not only to the c a p ita lis t economic system and the social superstructures which rest upon 1t, but to the entire language and culture which embody the conceptual roots of the social relations and power structures which perpetuate that economic system. Inherent, therefore, 1n this kind of analysis are the notions that change of economic ownership, and even political revolution, are not enough;

Ci'ture Itself must be cleansed of the Internal determinism of capitalist "discourse." But Sekula's work gives no hint that he has thought this through, that he has faced the apolocalyptlc

Implications of his omnivorous ferocity.

Instead, his personal delight 1n the preoccupation of Lewis

Hlne's photography with hands and craftsmanship suggests that he longs only for the reversal of Industrialization. Sekula's demand seems, superficially at least., only for the restoration of a simpler time; for a prelndustrlal, pastoral communal 1sm based upon the joys of Utopian anarchy, upon the dignities of unmanaged labor and of

Individualized craftwork.

Surely a calm and pleasant vision, this, a dream which f i l l s i many of us with longing for an Idyllic past. But achieving this 162

dream 1s difficult. Disregarding Marx's permission to avoid

engineering the future, let us speculate, as prominent Marxist

Lheorlsts of practical bent have already done, upon this problem.

Mao Tse Tung (who correctly saw the wisdom of Mllovan Dj11 as' view of

the social product of the revolution as a "new class" of

bureaucratized functionaries) attempted to combat, 1n China, the

surviving traditions of an ancient Cor>-ci pianist bureaucracy whose

historic tendencies toward formidable self-interest showed clearly

beneath Its more recent coat of Ideological red paint. Mao's

solution, the Great Cultural Revolution, was not only culturally and

politically unsuccessful 1t was also severely damaging to the economic and social function of the new society 1t was designed to

protect.

A less Indirect, Inefficient, and ineffective program of

political purltanism and radical re-acculturat1on can be seen 1n the

"Year Zero" program of Pol Pot, a program which carried cultural re­ education to the point of genocide. Such 1s the political

prescription clearly implied in the view of culture shared by

Foucault and Sekula. If a discourse forming the conceptual base of a

culture 1s to be truly stamped out, this cannot be effectively

accomplished through a "new pedagogy." Culture can only be eradicated, as Hitler and Pol Pot knew, within the biological

microcosm wherein 1t physically resides, the human brain. When these

Implications are confronted and recognized by serious political 163 thinkers who also act, the Imposing writings of Allan Sekula may well confer upon him, In the course of history, an Ironic function as the

Ideological authority for new holocausts of truly unimaginable proportions.

This 1s a point which deserves explicit critical recognition and confrontation. The Foucaultlan fury of Sekula's rhetoric evokes the echo of Sartre's despair: "Who will speak to these angry young men?

Who will enlighten their violence?"*®

The Cr1tocrat1c Imperative

The above 1s, of course, a "worst case scenario" of the possible

Implications for Sekullan theory 1n geopolitical holocaust. There 1s another scenario available; one more domestic, less extravagant, less horrifying, and more familiar. This Involves the comparatively bland

Interpretation of Sekula's work as mere academic literature, Its exhortations as mere critical rhetoric, Its aspirations as fantasy,

Its Ideology the product of everyday occupational struggle — what

Marx/Engels referred to as "politics as the language of real life."

Apropos here 1s a quote from Martha Rosier on the contemporary a rt scene. Though not w ritten with Sekula 1n mind, Its possible relevance 1s compelling:

Some of the opposition to bourgeois cultural hegemony has taken on the Althusserlan direction of "theoretical praxis," which claims as revolutionary the theoretical work that bares the structure of capitalist domination 1n the field of Ideology. . . . However, this work remains locked within the relations of production of Its own cultural 164

field. For critics and other sympathetic producers, this functionally modernist closure reinforces their own sense of opposition to hegemonic bourgeois culture without raising difficult questions about their relations to political movements . . . [19]

Consider "Traffic's" caveat that "neosymbol 1st revolts are not enough" and "Traffic's" demand for "resistances that unite culture and politics." Consider also "Reinventing Documentary's" demand for the "resolution of the problems of art . . . practically, by the struggle for an authentic socialism." Consider, too, "Reinventing

Documentary's" demand for an additional Invention, that of "a coherent oppositional politics," for an engagement of art's audience

"with ongoing progressive struggles against the established order," and for "an active resistance, simultaneously political and symbolic,

. . . a resistance aimed ultimately at socialist transformation."

In these phrases from "Traffic" and "Reinventing Documentary" we see a vision of a simultaneous h1gh-pr1esthood of both proletarian politics and bourgeois high culture; a vision of a new class of ph1losopher-k1ngs. This 1s a claim to the dominance of politics by c ritic s of culture, to the judgement of culture by leaders of politics, and to the combination of these authorities 1n the person and culture of the radical critic. This claim, this vision, may be called the "crltocratlc Imperative."

Obviously, such an Imperative has Internal contradictions, both

Inherent and extreme. When a subculture of pet1t-bourgeo1s cultural elitists declares war upon the culture of Its own ruling bourgeois 165 class at the same time that 1t claims that culture's highest

recognitions and foremost academic honors, 1t 1s 1n a paradoxical and unstable position — politically, socially and Ideologically.

As an Intellectual antagonist of bourgeois culture, a capable

radical criticism must become an Ironic cultural contradiction. If

1t 1s the rebellious stepchild of bourgeois civilization, 1t 1s also

Its most advanced cultural and Intellectual product; 1f 1t 1s Its

Nemesis, 1t 1s at once Its most cultivated flower. In order to analyze the esoteric thought-processes of bourgeois 1ntellectual1sm, a successful radical criticism must be Itself a product of the bourgeois Intelligentsia and must spring from the most formidable of bourgeois Intellects. In order to comment successfully upon the exploitations of capitalist culture, to analyze Its Ideological metaphor and expose Its bourgeois elitism, 1t must itself possess an

Intellectual accomplishment and cultural erudition which place 1t,

Ironically, 1n the avant-garde of bourgeois cultural evolution. To dare to p o litically denounce the bourgeois "myth of the Individual"

1t must, Itself, be surpassingly Individualistic; It must renounce the shelter of Its own class and, 1d1osyncrat1cally enough, be willing to risk all 1n attempting to convert biting the hand that feeds it Into establishment careers. But, try as 1t may, 1t cannot renounce Itself as a product of Its own bourgeois culture and Its own bourgeois class. Its contradictions are Intrinsic. They will not go 166 away; they fall to recognize the dialectical reality that, as Mao declared, "The struggle of opposites 1s absolute."2°

The Crltocratlc Imperative as Occupational Ideology

Sekula himself warns us:

No critical model can Ignore the fact that Interests contend 1n the real world. We should from the start be wary of succumbing to the 11beral-utop1an notion of disinterested "academic" exchange of Information. [21]

Let us heed this warning well. Let us ask, of radical criticism

Itself, the questions Implicitly but Inevitably suggested by the

Marxian, econom1c-determ1nist Inquiry Insisted upon 1n Sekula's writings: What 1s the "real world" of the radical critic? What

Interests contend therein? How and why should we be skeptical of radical criticism's presentation of Itself as disinterested,

"academic" exchange of Information?

To begin, let us claim as our basis for Inquiry the Marxian understanding of criticism as, for the critic, the language of work and occupation translated Into political Ideology, Into what

Marx/Engels called "the language of real life :"

. . . We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real Hfe-process we demonstrate the development of the Ideological. . . .

The production of Ideas, of conceptions, of conscious­ ness, 1s at first directly Interwoven with the material activity and the material Intercourse of men, the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, the mental Intercourse of men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their material behavior. The same applies to mental production as expressed 1n the language of politics. [22] 167

From this perspective, "Traffic's" exhortations toward "a critical theory of photography," "reinvented cultural practice," and

"resistances that unite culture and politics" may be understood as professional aspirations, as extrapolated Ideological products of what the political c ritic of culture does for a living and how that critic aspires to advance 1n Influence and acclaim.

In the Marxian "language of real life," the crltocratlc

Imperative serves the critic well, but 1t does so less 1n Its role as proletarian political sloganeering than as the shibboleth of a cult of high criticism , a sign by which the c ritic a l cognoscenti may advance and be recognized. It 1s, 1n this sense, an Ideology of academic lite r a ti; not necessarily of true p o liticals.

More, 1t is a literary fantasy whose theoretical understanding permits going beyond pure economic determinism to the Althusserlan theory of Ideology as a representation of the "the Imaginary relationships of Individuals to their real conditions of existence.

But, 1n Its nature as an Althusserlan "Imaginary relationship," the crltocratlc Imperative has a practical function. It enables the radical critic to work both sides of the political/cultural street, to function as a double agent scrambling for rewards and recognition on bcth sides of the class struggle.

The crltocratlc Imperative furnishes this double agent his

"cover." It serves to provide a synthetic, Lev1-Straus1an myth, an 168

Invented resolution of the unresolvable contradiction between radical criticism's manifest Ideology of proletarian protest and Its real- world, occupational nature as a form of bourgeois academic striving.

To accomplish this fabulous resolution, 1t asserts double reversals of Its Ideological and occupational role: to the radical community,

1t displays a claim to the appropriation of bourgeois Intellectual1sm

1n the service of radical politics; 1t simultaneously performs, 1n the literary and academic arenas, a real-world appropriation of revolutionary rhetoric 1n the struggle for bourgeois literary and academic success.24

However, the crltocratlc Imperative 1s nothing fundamentally new. On the political side, 1t 1s simply a contemporary -evlslon of a classic contradiction within Marxism Itself: the bourgeois

Intelligentsia's perpetual demand for leadership of the proletarian struggle. On the 11terary/academ1c side 1t 1s, 1n the rhetoric of

Marxist political struggle, what 1s called "bourgeois opportunism."

The politically sophisticated will recognize this Instantly.

But, to the politically naive, the appeal of the crltocratlc

Imperative 1s both eclectic and effective; 1t is persuasive to all kinds of actual and potential partisans of proletarian politics.

These partisans are, themselves, an already diverse band of

Ideological guerillas reflecting the classic definition of the political process as temporary alliance 1n pursuit of mutually shared goals. Thus, under "Traffic's" rhetorical banner may gather academic 169

Marxian theorists and cultural historians, genteel socialists and hard proletarian revolutionaries, old-fashioned Yankee populists, contemporary European Greens who demand the destruction of all

Industrialism and a return to the small community and to the soil, chic bourgeois elitists who Imagine the real goal of the revolution to be destruction of pop/mass culture and the universalization of haute couture, radical feminists and Foucaultlan theorists alienated by our culture's paternalism, failed small businessmen and large corporation personnel who have been chewed up and spit out by the capitalist economic system, and any others who may, for any reason -- good or bad -- detest contemporary capitalism and bourgeois culture.

But when these cultural and political troops are finally assembled, standing at attention, and drawn up 1n marching order, where shall they march?

To the bookstore, perhaps. The creation of a market -- an audience, a readership, 1n this case -- 1s the sine qua non of any media activity, even oppositional criticism. Thus, 1n a free- enterprise media system, "socialist transformation" 1s Itself transformed Into an entrepreneurial project; "ant1-cap1tal1st criticism" becomes an expanding capitalist business looking to exploit new markets 1n the colonies of the literati; "radical criticism" Is coopted and transformed Into another variety of bourgeois academic striving. 170

Such are the Ironies and the contradictions of the crltocratlc

Imperative translated Into Marx/Engels "language of real life ."

The Crltocratlc Imperative: Final Questions

What are the real purposes of the crltocratlc Imperative? What are Its Implications for photography as an artistic endeavor and as an academic Institution?

The genuine, actual "intent" of Sekula's Imperative 1s embedded

1n a web of Marxist problematic far too sticky for resolution here.

This essay, therefore, offers no answers, only questions about three

possibilities: 1) Is Sekula's crltocratlc Imperative the genuine,

steel-edged ant1-cap1tal1; " politics which it proclaims Itself to be?

2) Is it, perhaps, an exercise 1n bourgeois opportunism, an

appropriation of the rhetoric of the class struggle as a sales ploy for radical criticism ? 3) Or is 1t both at once?

What does 1t matter? Intentional 1st speculations are of no practical use to us; what 1s important here are real-world

Implications for the Institutional trajectory of academic and art photography. Where are we heading? Let us confront the question.

Consider Sekula's call for the removal of photographic history and scholarship from the traditions of the fine arts to, one assumes, a more "p olitically relevant," more "documentary" context. Sekula closes his Introduction to Photography Against the Grain with this declaration: 171

The "photography boom" has rejuvenated sectors of elite culture and conferred a new prestige upon sectors of mass culture. A vast archive has been opened up for art historical sorting and accreditation. . . . as Marx remarked of the Second Empire, history repeats its e lf as farce. But there 1s also a dialogue of opposition and resistance, a dialogue within which I count myself as only one voice. My hope 1s that this dialogue will move beyond Its present Institutional limits. [25]

Let us also recall Sekula's other words, quoted above, that the

"problems of art are refractions of a larger cultural and Ideological crisis, . . . and will only be resolved practically, by the struggle for an authentic socialism." It seems clear that -- _1jF photography

1s to accept the crltocratlc Imperative and the Sekullan critical project at face value — photographic academia 1s being recruited as the shock troops of a direct political assault on the cultural and economic foundations of existing society.

This possibility, and its Implications, deserve careful consideration. 172

FOOTNOTES: CHAPTER VI

(1) Allan Sekula, Photography Against the Grain: Essays and Photo Works. 1973-63. (Halifax. Press of1 the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. 1984), p. xv.

(2) Karl Marx, Capital. Vol. I, trans. Ben Fowkes, (New York, Vintage, 1977), p. 166. Quoted 1n Allan Sekula, "The Traffic 1n Photographs." Art Journal. (New York), Sprlnq 1981, p. 23.

(3) Allan Sekula, "The Traffic 1n Photographs," Art Journal, (New York), Spring 1981, p. 15.

(4) Ibid.

(5) Ibid., p. 19.

(6) Ibid, p. 16.

(7) Ibid.

(8) Allan Sekula, "Dismantling Modernism, Reinventing Documentary (Notes on the P olitics of Representation)," Massachusetts Review. Vol. XIX, No. 4 (W inter, 1978), p. 862.

(9) Ibid, p. 883.

(10) Allan Sekula, "School 1s a Factory," Photography, (footnote 1), supra, pp. 198-234.

(11) Michel Foucault, "Panoptlclsm," ch. 3 of Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan, (New York, Pantheon, 1977), pp. 195-228.

(12) For example, see: John Berger, Ways of Seeing, (New York, Penguin, 1977. First published by The British Broadcasting Corp., London, 1972).

(13) Sekula, T raffic, (footnote 3), supra, p. 19.

(14) Photography 201; Photography 601, The Ohio State University, my notes.

(15) Sekula, "The Invention cf Photographic Meaning," Photography, (footnote 1), supra, pp. 6-21. 173

(16) Jonathan Green, American Photography: A Critical History, 1945 to the Present, (New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1984), p. 201.

(17) Marx to Ruge, 1843. Excerpted 1n Literature In Revolution, Geo. Abbott White and Chas. Newman, eds., (New York, Holt/ R1nehart/W1nston, 1972), "Introductions," p. 1, facing.

(18) Jean-Paul Sartre, Situations, trans. George Brazil Her, Inc., (New York, Fawcett, 1964), p. 88.

(19) Martha Rosier, "Notes on Quotes," Wedge 2, (Fall, 1982), p. 72.

(20) "The Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People," 1957, quoted 1n Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse Tung (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1976), p. 214.

(21) Allan Sekula, "On the Invention of Photographic Meaning," reprinted 1n Sekula, Photography, supra, (footnote 1), p. 3.

(22) Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, from The German Ideology, ed. C. J. Arthur (New York: International, 1970), p. 47.

(23) Ph111 ip Rosen, "Screen and the Marxist Project 1n Film Criticism," Quarterly Review of Film Studies, Vol. 2, no. 3, (Aug. 1977), pp. £?5-276.

(24) It may be that such a situation Is inevitable. As Said has written 1n regard to traditional literary criticism, the culture of criticism tends to be Incestuous; 1t 1s -- perhaps by necessity — Its own and only audience; 1t writes for Itself.

Perhaps, too, Baudrlllard 1s correct 1n his thesis that culture has Imploded 1n upon Itse lf; that the masses resist all social Insight, from any source, by cultivating a mindless fascination with the signals of our mass communications systems 1n order to shut out meaning.

If Said and Baudrlllard are correct, then political critics may also need to speak only to th eir own audience, for no one else will listen. See: 174

Edw. W. Said, "Opponents, Audiences, Constituencies and Community," C ritical Inquiry IX (Sept. 1982), reprinted 1n Hal Foster, ed., The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodernist Culture, (Port Townsend, Wash., Bay Press, 15537. See also:------

Jean Baudrlllard, "The Implosion of Meaning 1n the Media and the Implosion of the Social 1n the Masses," reprinted 1n The Myths of Information: Technology and Postindustrial Culture, Kathleen Woodward, ed., (Madison, Wise., Coda Press, 1980).

(25) Sekula, Photography, (footnote 1), supra, p. XV. CHAPTER VII

PHOTOCRITICISM AS THE POLITICS OF LEFT LITERATURE:

THE RECEPTION OF JONATHAN GREEN'S POPULIST MYTHIC ISM

We are never outside representation — or rather, never outside its politics. — Hal Foster

Photographic Criticism; "Pro" and "Anti"

Anti-photographic criticism condemns photography, on grounds basically political, as an Institutionalized medium compHcltous 1n the functioning of a fundamentally objectionable (capitalist, patrlarchlal) sc’dal order. Its roots and concerns He 1n politics, not 1n art.

In Art After Modernism, Brian Wallis makes a clear statement of how contemporary ant1-photograph1c criticism Invents Its position v1s-a-v1s Modernism:

Beyond the more obviously symbolic overtones of 1984, the year may be remembered 1n the a rt world as that 4n which a debate, resulting from the loss of public funding for American a rt c ritic s , revealed deep fissures and contradictions In contemporary art criticism as a whole. Many traditional critics -- writers for The New York Times, Newsweek, and New York magazine, for example — publicly confessed to doubts about the Intellectual worth of criticism owing to Its supplemental position, subservient to the primary creative activity of the artist. At the same time, neoconservative critics seized the opportunity to Insist, once again, that contemporary criticism 1s too

175 176

political and that most art critics are [to quote HU ton kramer] "opposed to just about every policy of the United States except the ones that put money In their own pockets." In this paradoxical climate — where some see a rt criticism as having too much power while others find 1t Impotent — 1t 1s hardly surprising that many observers, especially In the growing audience for art, should find this a period of particular crisis 1n art criticism. . . .

Any understanding of contemporary art and criticism 1s necessarily bound up with a consideration of modernism, for modernism 1s the cultural standard which even today governs our conception of what art 1s. Modernism was the great dream of Industrial capitalism, an Idealistic Ideology which placed Its faith 1n progress and sought to create a new order. . . . Today modernism 1s exhausted; Its once provocative or outrageous products H e entombed 1n the cultural Institutions they once threatened and offended. Picasso, Joyce, Lawrence, Brecht, Pollock, and Sartre are our contemporary classics. . . . Now, not only 1s the avant-garde no longer radical, though Its forms continue to be reproduced and simulated for an overextended art market, but 1n a final Irony, modernism has become the o fficial culture, the aesthetic haven of neoconservatives......

Considered 1n social terms, representation stands for the Interests of power. Consciously or unconsciously, all Institutionalized forms of representation certify corresponding Institutions of power. As Louis Althusser demonstrated, this power may be encoded subllmlnally 1n the Iconography of communication, as well as 1n the anonymous evaluations which construct the "Ideological state apparatuses" of the family, religion, law, culture, and nationality. Typical cultural representations, such as newspaper photographs, films, advertisements, popular fiction, and art, carry such Ideologically charged IYl6SSdQGS • • • •

Art and artmaklng might be one effective site for . . . critical Intervention. From this point of view, the Issue 1s less how art criticism can best serve art than how art can serve as a fruitful realm for critical and theoretical activity. This gives to art criticism a responsibility and a political potential 1t Is often denied (what the artist Victor Burgln refers to as "the p o litics of representa­ tion," as opposed to the "representation of politics). . . . 177

The central purpose of art and art criticism since the early 1960s has been the dismantling of the monolythlc myth of modernism and the dissolution of Its oppressive progression of great Ideas and great masters. As the leading cultural products of late modernism — abstract expressionism, the nouveau roman, existentialism, avant- garde film, New Criticism — were gradually set aside, they were replaced by a rt forms and c ritic a l models which specifically countered the Ideals of modernism. [1]

From this we see that ant1-photograph1c criticism 1s essentially art-Modern, while pro-photograph1c criticism Incarnates the ethos and the aesthetic of Modernism. It centers upon the use, advocacy, and appreciation of the medium, not upon the medium's appropriation by writing or Its subjugation to the status of data for political analysis. Pro-photograph1c, Modernist criticism assumes the legitimacy of the social order, the existence and value of the

"subject" viewer, and the desirability of advancing the viewer's quality of life within the existing circumstances of the viewer's own

"be1ng-1n-the-world." Pro-photograph1c criticism seeks and advocates the vitality and growth of the medium Itself. Modernist criticism celebrates the medium Itse lf; 1t expounds the medium's role as a socially and personally worthy art and as an Intrinsically valuable component of the subject's I1fe-fulf1llm ent; 1t does not oppose the enrichment of life through art as political opiate obstructive of social change.

As well as the worth of the Individual subject-vlewer, Modernist photographic criticism assumes the value of the Individual photographer, of creative art, and of the photographic Image. As 178

Jonathan Green wrote, In the text of Celebrations, Ms book with

Minor White:

As Weston, each photographer celebrates his own Mass with his own symbols of meaning. Each photograph affirms the singularity of the creative art and the specificity of Individual perception. Each photograph celebrates the unity and potency of the visible world. [2]

The major task of the pro-photograph1c critic 1s to Interpret to the viewer the critic's own — and hopefully, the critic's own, outstandingly sensitive and articulate — experience of the photographer's creative Involvement and the photograph's own potential for elucidating and enriching the viewer's experience of that photograph, the viewer's own patterns of existence, and the meaning of those patterns to the viewer and to his world.

The Pro-photoqraph1c Criticism of Szarkowskl and Green

Various Modernist photographic critics have made uniquely valuable contributions to the body of such criticism and to the advancement of the photographic medium Itself. Within the broad context of art photography, museum culture, print journalism, and book publication John Szarkowskl 1s perhaps America's most widely known and most generally prestigious pro-photographic critic. From his position as Director of the Department of Photography of the

Museum of Modern Art he has sponsored the contemporary acceptance of photography as an Independent, self-contained, fine art. 179

This sponsorship has been expressed, most particularly, 1n his

book The Photographer's Eye. In which he outlined for the medium a

unique, visual/conceptual paradigm of photographic aesthetics and

Information. His advocacy of photography-as-art also Informs his book Looking at Photographs: 100 Pictures from the Collection of the

Museum of Modern Art, 1n which the application to photography of eclectic but traditional fine arts criteria -- Intention, creativity, aesthetics, craft, technique, social environment, artistic Influence, biography -- received powerful new legitimation, by not only the moving qualities of Szarkowskl's prose and by the force of his personal

Imprimatur, but by the prestigious aura of official MOMA sponsorship.

Szarkowskl's theoretical perspectives are multiple, bt they are largely contained within conventional Modernist traditions of art criticism and history. To these traditions Szarkowskl has added a persuasive vision of photography as a distinct, Modernist f1ne-art, as a medium complete and unique unto Itself, and as a field of contemporary creativity enjoying the official approbation of the museum culture.

Szarkowskl's critical work Is anathema to the rising generations of anti-photographic critics. He 1s Modernist, not Post-

Structuralist; aesthetic, not political; gender-oblivious, not

Feminist; successful, not struggling; a member of the bourgeois establishment, not proletarian; Ciceronian, not Marxist. His prose can be both delicately poetic and brusquely analytical; 1t maintains 180 a traditional cr1t1cal-wr1t1ng standard of aesthetic elegance and

Intuitive power. His precise but un-footnoted historicity places his work within the critical arena of the museum-culture, not the academlc/polItlcal arena of the younger, ant1-photograph1c writers whose critical project Includes the ensconcement of radical proselytlsm as academic dogma.

Thus, from a broad, eclectic view of contemporary American culture, Szarkowskl may be considered the leading photographic critic of the time; certainly, the premier pro-photograph1c critic. The work of Jonathan Green — which 1s the major focus of this chapter —

1s, 1n most of the above respects, firmly within this tradition.

Jonathan Green 1s Director of the Unlversfty Gallery at The

Ohio State University and Professor of Photography 1n the OSU

Department of Photography and Cinema. He has, 1n the past, been a professional photographer and an Associate Editor of Aperture. He has w ritten and edited Camera Work; A C ritical Anthology (1973), The

Snapshot (1974), and, 1n cooperation with Minor White, Celebrations

(1974). He 1s the author of the new (1984) American Photography: A

Critical History, 1945 to the Present. He 1s a principal essayist 1n

American Images: 1945-1980, edited by Peter Turner (1985). He 1s also a frequent speaker and panelist, and a curator and juror of photographic work; he served as juror for the 1986 Ferguson Grant of the Friends of Photography.^ 181

One of the major literary themes and theoretical perspectives visible 1n Green's American Photography: A C ritical History, 1945 to the Present 1s a personal documentation of, and a cultural/ philosophical analysis of, this period of American photohistory. In

Its emphasis on Individualism within artist and work, and Its emphasis on the Impact of one artist and artistic tradition upon another, 1t 1s relentlessly Modernist, as 1t 1s also 1n Its underlying ethic of liberal Humanism. However, 1t goes beyond traditional Modernism 1n that 1t 1s a neo-Structural1st analysis of the medium 1n the context of cultural environment: a commentary upon the archetypal myths which Inform the trends, traditions and world-views of American cul jre and thereby Influence the course of

American photography. (Green's more contemporary embrace of a neo-

Structurallst direction 1n photographic criticism 1s comparable to that of Parker Tyler and others 1n fllm.^)

In the Structuralist approach pioneered by Lev1-Straus, the ancient thought-patterns of human narrative expression are the key to an analysis of patterns of culture 1n terms of Its basic (mythic) cultural definitions of human beings' relationships to each other, to th eir societies and th eir cultures, and to the cosmos.^ Following

Walt Whitman, 1t 1s Green's Insight that the physical settings or moral Ideals of our own mythic traditions -- the Land, the Frontier,

Freedom, Democracy, Egalitarianism, Utilitarianism, Patriotism,

Justice, Progress, the "Melting Pot," acquire high mythic status -- 182 they become archetypal underpinnings of the cultural narratives, not only of American literatu re, but also of American photography. In

Green's own words:

The central force behind the work of American photographers has been the reality of the American experience. Before the photographs were made, the photographers were provoked by the life of an emerging young country, the possibilities of unprecedented liberty, a workable political system, and a vast yet ever-receding frontier. More than other factors, more than the precedents of tradition 1n art and thought and more than the determinations of techniques, lens, and process, were the presences of the land, the culture, the myths, and the symbols that defined America. The work of Timothy O'Sullivan, Alfred St1egl1tz, Paul Strand, Walker Evans, Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, and Edward Stelchen defines a series of particular connections between the culture and land of America and the act of consciousness and creation we call photography. Their work serves well to chart a series of archetypal relationships that photographers have maintained with America. Although other photographers doubtless could stand as representatives of some of these attitudes and visions, these particular men have either made the best possible use of the land and subject matter that they have Inherited or have defined 1n their work and careers the distinct and peculiar problems of photographing here. They have seen a world and been motivated by an experience that 1s distin ctly American. They have approached th eir work with characteristic American s p irit and Intensity and have defined characteristically American styles and subjects. By their continual and genuine Inquiry Into the possibilities of making photographs 1n these United States and by the strength of their Images and attitudes, they have set forth traditions that continue to dominate American photography, attitudes that the photographers of today have either followed or rebelled against. Their work has not been Ignored. As we look at the work of these men, we find that over and over again their photography seems to be deeply Involved 1n one of, or a combination of, four major themes that recur with such regularity that they seem to take on the force of obsession and expectation. These are the themes that penetrate most directly to the essentials of the American Imagination: the notion of Democracy; the Idea of the Frontier; the Puritan heritage; and the demands 183

of Utilitarianism. These concepts, ever strong 1n the popular Imagination, have had the most decisive Influence on what was to become the most popular American a rt form; they have determined the content, the form, and the values of American photography. As a touchstone, . . . I have frequently alluded to that quintessential embodiment of nineteenth-century American radical Idealism, Walt Whitman. No one better sums up that curious sensibility produced by the powerful currents of egalitarianism, utlltarlanlsm, Puritanism, and the frontier. I refer to Whitman not so much as a direct influence on . . . [American] photographers (though at t^mes his Influence was decisive) but as a catalyst, progenitor, and prophet to whom they . . . relate, a poet who serves to define the world out of which they . . . grew. [6]

These WMtmanesque visions and Ideals acquire, 1n Green's understanding of American culture, almost the nature of Platonic

"Ideas," of abstract re a litie s toward which our culture strives by constant, hopeful Imitation.^ Green's American myths are related, also, to the great literary "Mythol" of Northrop Frye,® the

"archetypal symbols" of Jung,® and the contemporary "ideas" which find repetitive expression 1n "conceptual art."

In common with all these varieties of Idealism, Green's American myths are Intellectual abstractions around which a rtis tic expressions organize themselves, thus becoming real forces which move the social world. In this sense, Green's view 1s well characterized as an active "Mythic Idealism" going beyond the classical Structuralist view of myths as passive eplphenomena. Though Green does not present these mythic Ideals as philosophical "prime movers" or as original, total, or sole determinants of social thought, he does Insist upon some degree of motive force for these archetypes; Green's eclectic 184 causality rejects Northrop Frye's strict "Structuralist" restriction of meaning to the history of the text and to the text's Internal

Inter-relationships.*® Green's thought would probably find Itself 1n agreement with the Derrldean Indeterminism which ascribes an

Influence on everything to everything else,** but he would Insist that his myths do have a strong and determinate Influence on the culture and society from which they spring, an Influence evident 1n the culture's artistic Icons. At the same time, Green admits -- and specifically considers -- the Influences on these Icons exerted by other factors: politics, linguistics, artistic tradition, Individual artistic Inspiration and Influence, etc. Like Lev1-Straus'

"brlcoleur," Green overlooks nothing.

Like Lev1-Straus, Green believes 1n the power and validity of the popular myth. He would support the following comments of Lev1-

Straus' concerning the relationship between myth and science:

Both [mythic and scientific] approaches are equally valid. Physics and chemistry are already striving to become qualitative again, ... and biology may perhaps be marking time waiting for this before I t can explain life. Mythical thought for Its part 1s Imprisoned 1n the events and experiences which 1t never tire s of ordering and re­ ordering 1n Its search to find them a meaning. [12]

I would argue there Is no complete contradiction between the

Structuralist notions of myth as narrative determinant (Lev1-Straus,

Frye), the 1nter-releted Indeterminism of language expounded by

Barthes and Derrida, and the archetypal, Whitmanesque "ideals-as- myths" propounded by Green. 185

Putting such an argument In a form sufficiently oversimplified

to make sense, 1t might be said that Barthes argued, In "The Death of

the Author," that writing 1s not written, but writes Itself through

the author-as-1nstrument.!3 Derrida's premise may be understood as

the notion that writing Is not (In the classical sense of objectively

meaningful signs) written at all; writing consists of cultural

"texts" which are made of words and "-a^es, each of which 1s subject

to the Interminable alteration and re-definition by the Interaction and substitution of Innumerable linguistic, social, and historical

sub-texts.

A complete Derrldean Indeterminism -- pushed to the point of

reductlo ad absurdum — Implies that nothing can, with certainty, mean anything at a ll.^ I would argue that, while this may be

logically "true," 1t has no practical Implications; that successful

reading requires no certainty, only probabilities. Further, I would argue that sub-texts are equal 1n th eir meaning to all "readers"

(photographer, artist, viewer, etc.) only 1n that extreme of meaninglessness where everything means, equally, nothing; that 1f anything means anything, then some sub-texts are necessarily more determinate upon meaning than others. Finally, I would argue that

Green's archetypes, his Whitmanesque myths, may be defined 1n quasl-

Derrldean terms: they may be seen as strongly Influential

(determinate) subtexts affecting the recognition or Imputation of

lite ra ry and visual meaning to cultural a rtifa c ts such as literatu re 186 and photography. In this sense, the "difference" between Green and

Derrida disappears.

If "photography" 1s substituted for "literature," the following description of Northrop Frye's Ideas, by Terry Eagleton, seems to reveal ju st such a "disappearance of difference" between

Structuralist mythologies (Green) and linguistic Indeterminism

(Derrida):

Literature [the text] Is not a way of knowing reality, but a kind of collective, Utopian dreaming which has gone on throughout history, an expression of those fundamental human desires [Ideals?] which have given rise to civilization Itself, but which are never fully satisfied there. . . . It 1s not to be seen as the self-expression of Individual authors, who are no more than functions of this universal system; 1t springs from the collective subconscious of the human race Itself, which 1s how 1t comes to embody "archetypes" or figures of universal significance. [15]

A "myth," an "archetype," a "universal;" each 1s an

Influentially determinate sub-text, under other, more specific names.

While Roland Barthes has applied a Marxist, deconstructlve, demystifying myth-analysls to contemporary culture, and sometimes to photographic considerations,^ Green's new book 1s the first book- length, comprehensive, sophisticated Infusion of an empathetlc, non- hostlle Structuralist critique Into the history of American

Photography -- even Rosalind Krauss' photocriticism , while "avant-

Structurallst," 1s not really "friendly" to the photographic medium; rather, it Is detached, analytical, and clearly more honorific of writing. 187

Except for Krauss' curiously S tructuralist work, the original

decades of mythology and Structuralism as Intellectual chic have

passed, at least In the the arenas of "serious" academic,

Intellectual, and political photocriticism. The currently received

directions In photocriticism (the doctrinal contexts of Marxist

dialectics, Feminism, and Post-Structural 1sm) seem to have developed

to mature strength In the nineteen seventies, after and outside the

period of dominant Structuralist Influence 1n other areas of high

culture. Mythic Structuralism has not yet been exhaustively explored

as an academic and theoretical approach to the understanding of

photography; Green's book 1s therefore entitled to be viewed as an

enormously valuable return to a path not taken. It 1s a new

Investigation of a cultural critique unjustifiably passed over 1n the

delayed, and still Incomplete, rush of academic/intellectual

photocr1t1c1sm to reinvent Itself as "now," as Instantly and vitally

contemporary as born 1n the flush of passionate maturity, like Venus

from the forehead of Zeus.

As noted above, 1n Green's book the narrative and symbolic

structure of American photography Is viewed as a constantly

developing and mutating expression of the great 18th and 19th century

American Ideals. This continues, even today, 1n our photographic

obsessions with the morality of politics (Puritanism, Justice,

Egalitarianism), with documentary realism (Puritanism, Science) and,

arguably, with Arc (Beauty). When these older American archetypical 188 ways of seeing and understanding are supplemented by whatever new archetypes emerge from the future of history, Green's work may be evaluated as the seminal work of an advanced, philosophical neo-

Structurallsm, a new critical permission for the photographer and the viewer to place and understand themselves within the force and context of their own culture's dominant, mythical Ideas and Icons.

For example, Green writes:

In Whitman's America the a r tis t 1s an entrepreneur, a contractor who undertakes to articulate and disseminate the feelings and beliefs of the ordinary American. His role 1s to celebrate the most common life, knowing that "the great master . . . sees health for himself 1n being one of the mass." The prototypical Americans 1n Whitman's world may be the mechanics, housewives, and tradesmen, but their Idols are personified by the folk heroes and celebrities created by the self-same egalitarian dream. The poets, politicians, and prophets may praise the common man, but the common man sees himself and defines his ambition 1n relationship to the new heroes of the egalitarian state: the actor, the entertainer, and the h1gh-fash1on model. The hosting of the masses toward art paradoxically engenders an obsession with the celebrity, who 1s merely a common man himself, spotlit by the new technology of publicity. Edward Stelchen spent a lifetime pursuing, photographing, and cataloging those Images, commodities, and celebrities that epitomized the dreams of the common American, And in the process, by helping to create the celebrity's Image, he became a celebrity himself. This symbiotic relationship between photographer and s itte r 1s, of course, not unusual In our time. It will be repeated frequently, particularly 1n the work of American fashion and p o rtrait photographers. The appeal of Karsh and Avedon certainly consists as much 1n their connections with other celebrities as In their own talents. [17]

As In the above words, Green's work 1n American Photography

Incorporates the approach of the anthropologically-minded curator who seeks 1n "contemporary" as well as 1n "primitive" art the popular 189

expression of culture 1n myth and the Incarnation of myth 1n Icon.

This understanding of photography 1s outwardly proclaimed 1n the

book-jacket design, a reproduction of Images from James Friedman's

"History of the World." This work — a collection of rephotographed,

famous Images — 1s privileged by Green as an exhibit of archetypical

Icons metaphoric of our cultures' preoccupations with violence, death, birth, sex, the land, etc.; a collection that "posits a

rudimentary semiology of Images: . . . those photographic Icons,

subjects, and gestures that have acquired obsessive status In our culture." From this perspective, Friedman's work becomes a

collection of secularly sacred Icons; visual manifestations of our

"sorely tried but seemingly Invincible myths."

Green's approach Is anthropological 1n method, as well as 1n concept. His own direct experience as a working, professional photographer during much of the period about which he writes makes

his American Photography: A C ritical History almost a "report" 1n

the "participative observer" tradition of sociological and anthropological research. As a result of this participative personal

history, Green bases his book's c ritic a l/h isto ric a l view of

photography 1n "the reality of the American experience" and Its

Included, Institutional aspects of photographic culture: political,

Intellectual, commercial, artistic, mass-med1a, or simply "pop."

Wherever such aspects demonstrate, 1n Green's critical

retrospect, an enduring historical and cultural Import, those aspects 190

are considered 1n his book. Here are some excerpts from Green's

comments on his own work 1n the Spring, 1985, Issue of Exposure:

I wanted to write about those Issues that seemed to be obsessive for those photographers who were working at the same time I was working as a photographer . . . the particular Influences and activities that I chose were . . . the most compelling and primary In the minds of the majority . . .

You look at the activity within the period, and certain major themes emerge. . . . Ideas, 1n this sense, exist and emerge from the real world. The work that becomes Important In any given period -- both historical work and contemporary work — becomes Important because 1t meets a demand. Its sensibility fits Into the general cultural milieu of the time. . . . This 1s a history of the photography that was well-known during this period. It's not all art photography. It also Includes photojournalism, advertising, and magazine work . . . I wanted to talk as clearly as possible about the forces that were felt by the predominant workers 1n the field, during that time . . . [18]

Exercising his critical prerogative, Green elects to Inform his

h1stor1c1sm with a majorltarlan concept of still photography; a

concept of photography which does not surgically excise photography

from the Institutional mainstream. He defines the significance of

photographic Images and Issues 1n terms of their Impact upon the

medium Itself as well as upon the culture within which the medium operates; he does not revise history In the Interests of politics,

nor does he enforce an e l i t i s t evaluation based narrowly upon

political or Intellectual 1st judgements of photography's Impact upon

Its academic, Intellectual, and political milieu.

The academic/intellectual reception of such a work as Green's

has, predictably, been less than universally enthusiastic. In 191

particular, two pieces 1n the Spring, 1985 Exposure expressed a

variety of unapproving views.19 Without elaborately replicating

Green's own explications of his work and theoretical positions -- explications which stand well, by themselves, without my own assistance — I will suggest, below, certain metacrltlcal Issues which clamor to be recognized 1n "deconstructing" the oppositional criticism directed at Green's work.

The Arenas of Criticism

To do this, 1t will first be necessary to step back from this dissertation Itself, from this particular meta/crltlcal situation, and to sociologically analyze what might be called the "scene" of

American photocr1t1c1sm today. Doing so, we might recognize — as

Jonathan Green himself has suggested — a number of different

"arenas" or Institutional loci of critical activity. To speculate:

The first of these 1s the "art culture" (which Green himself represents 1n his capacity as Director of The Ohio State University

Gallery). This of course Includes university and private galleries, alternative spaces, public and private museums, private collections, and the publications which expound their activities and concerns.

A second arena 1s the academic. This arena encompasses the ongoing activities of classroom teaching and of publication 1n photo- historical or critical journals published by academic organizations; for Instance, Exposure. 192

A third 1s the avant-garde arena. This may be defined as the critical analysis of photographic art and writing 1n terms of concepts and value judgements which question and oppose the existing forms, boundaries, and Institutional Involvements of the medium and which attempt to use criticism of the medium to change the social conditions of Its production. Critical writing 1n this arena seeks to propel the medium 1n new artistic directions, and to extract, 1n passing, whatever may have value 1n emerging contemporary work, and to politically renovate society Itself. In photocr1t1c1sm, the prototypical non-academic organ of this arena 1s Afterimage.

A fourth Is the arena of commercialized publishing: art books, journals, newspapers, magazine . In the case of publications such as

Aperture, or of the various commerclal-venture art magazines, this arena overlaps others.

A fifth arena expresses the needs and values of the Institutions of commercial photography: advertising, fashion, journalism, portraiture. The criticism which takes place here 1s of course geared to a commercially useful, "slick" formalism customarily rejected 1n other critical arenas; the primary advocate of this mercantile aesthetic 1s American Photographer.

A sixth arena arises from the various oppositional sub-cultures.

This Is the political arena of photocriticism, the only arena which has no firm basis within established Institutions. Its criticism emerges, first, from an oppositional foundation of radicalized 193

Individuals within the conventional academic, journalistic and museum-culture worlds; second, from the demi-monde of socially alienated and Institutionally disconnected Individuals 1n the "shadow university" of non-attending "student" political activists; and third, from the often alienated but still socially connected student populations of academic Institutions teaching photography.

These six arenas and their economic bases of support might be depicted as 1n the diagrams on the following page: 194

ARENAS OF PHOTOCRITICISM AND THEIR ECONOMIC BASES

Arena: Art Culture

Base: Museums, galleries, art schools, dealers, artists, CAA

Arena: Academia

Base: Graduate schools, learned journals, professors, SPE

Arena: Avant-garde criticism

Base: Afterimage, art magazines, critical Intelligentsia

Arena: Commercial publishing

Base: Publishers & bookstores, art & photography books, mags.

Arena: Commerlcal photography

Base: Advertising, fashion, journalism, protralture, etc.

Arena: Political criticism

Base: Economically, none (until Infiltrates other arenas

In the above schema, the arena of oppositional p o litics 1s the only one 1n which the activity of criticism lacks an economic support system; the only one which, in Marxian terms, superstructure exists without base. The necessary tactic of political criticism 1s, 195 therefore, to occupy another arena and thereby acquire an

In stitu tio n al base.

Such a base will meet several needs for political criticism: first, to acquire financial support; second, to protect Itself from attack by political Institutions, and third, to continue and expand

Its own program of political attack upon majority Institutions.

This activity may be readily understood 1n terms of a biological metaphor that Is as apt as It may be tired: the spread of cancer.

Thus, the survival and growth of political criticism necessitates the physical Invasion of other cells (arenas) and the functional conversion of these host arenas to the service of the Invader. The history of this process In photographic criticism Is clear: political criticism appropriates the arena of academic/intellectual criticism (example follows).

In tactical expressions of this basic strategy, political criticism penetrates the academic arena behind several literary stalking-horses, each a separate variety of critical style which mimics the style of criticism characteristic of another arena:

The f ir s t of these styles 1s avant-garde 1conoc)asm; the often undisguised destructiveness and hostility of political criticism make It appear an avant-garde form of literary art.

The second is Intellectuallsm . This style, of course, has a legitimate claim to academic respectability: the long European history of erudite Marxist scholarship and cutting-edge Marxist 196 criticism — by such as Benjamin, Barthes, and Berger -- presents

Impressive credentlatlon.

Two other disguises are the mask of art criticism and the mask of Impartial academic scholarship. Political commentary 1s presented as art criticism by focusing 1t upon photography-as-art and upon the cultural circumstances of that photography. At the same time, political criticism reinvents Itself as Impartial scholarship; the actuality of Its absolute political Intention 1s hidden beneath the academic stylistics of impartial research: dense prose, arcane jargon, obscure factual1ty, and elaborate footnotes. Thus packaged,

1t presents itself as academic orthodoxy, the "history of photography": an old, conservative title for a new, Foucaultlan discourse of radicalized, professional control of thought.

As this legitimation progresses, political criticism again reinvents Itself: first as "cultural criticism," then as

"revisionist cultural criticism," and finally as "Marxist (or

Feminist) criticism of culture." From here, 1t 1s but a short step of praxis to overt demands for the establishment of politically oppositional criticism as academically respectable and academically protected. While actually dedicated to such political Ideals as

"socialist transformation" and "overthrow of the patriarchy," the artistic and literary privileging of these political demands as "art criticism," "academic scholarship," and "avant-gardism" provides for 197 the political shelter of these demands beneath the Immunity of

"academic freedom."

Once received as In stitu tio n ally "academic" In nature, political criticism seeks an economic support system 1n salaried positions, tenure, prestige, academic freedom, and scholarly/critical journals.

For Instance, Exposure. During 1984, 1985, and 1986 ten Issues have (at this writing) been published. Five of the ten cover

Illustrations had direct or metaphoric significance under political

Ideologies, one did not, and four covers had no Illustration. One

Issue was entirely devoted to Feminist criticism, while special

Issues devoted to non-pol1t1cal topics did not appear. Most of the artlcle-length pieces printed 1n the nine regular, "non-top1cal"

Issues have been Marxist, Feminist, and/or linguistically Post- structuralist, while few have been traditionally non-pol1t1cal.

Signposts of this pol1t1c1zat1on of Exposure have been clear.

For Instance, 1n Spring, 1984, James Hugunln's lead artic le rejected humanist criticism 1n favor of "Marxist realism;" Hugunln also advocated the politicization of photographic Postmodernism and the use of documentary photography 1n direct political action.20 The following Issue, Summer, 1984, was a special Issue devoted entirely to Feminist photographic production and critique. The next Issue,

Fall, 1984, contained an editorial Introduction 1n which Jan Z1ta

Grover defined the "editors' mission" 1n precise Sekullan terms: emphasis upon photography as Industrial, political, economic, and 198 cultural phenomenon, rather than as art.21 The next Issue, Winter,

1984, saw the lead article by Linda Andre characterize photography's task as "to change the world," and characterize any criticism but dialectical as "Irrelevant 1f not downright dangerous."22 Next, the

Spring, 1985 Issue saw separate articles by Vincent Leo and James

Hugunln attacking Jonathan Green's new book as non-pol1t1cal, non- opposltlonal, non-Marxist, and "traditionally American."23 The next Issue, Summer 1985, contained an editorial advocacy, by Grover, of "Feminism 1n the Classroom."24 The year's la st Issue, Winter

1985, featured an a rtic le by Deborah Bright demanding the politicization of landscape photography.2^

In 1986, only two Issues have been received. Jan Z1ta Grover has resigned as co-editor, but remaining Editor David Jacobs has renewed his allegiance to their program:

I am now handling the editorial duties of exposure, and I would like to reiterate my commitment to the agenda that Jan Z. Grover and I developed two years ago .... "Fundamental questions about the teaching and practice of art photography . . . editorial, advertising, photojour- nallstlc, political and scientific photography, questions about Interpreting, promoting, collecting, and marketing photographs, have not been addressed, either within the Society or our culture at large. . . . Although the last six Issues . . . addressed many of these concerns, there 1s clearly much more to be said and done. [26]

In the first 1986 Issue, two of the five articles were directly p o litic a l,2^ while two dealt with the cultural critiques of American society presented by Robert Frank. The only "non-pol1t1cal" article was one on Walker Evans, by William Stott. 199

In the second 1986 Issue, there was one frankly political a rtic le on "Lesbian Representation." Also featured were a demythlclzlng "essay-revlew" of two biographies of Robert Capa, a basically non-political examination of the contradictory positions of

John Ruskln on the veracity of photographic evidence, and a peripherally political examination of Larry Clark's documentlons of the depths of contemporary social decadence In sex and drugs.

This brief treatment of the political emphasis of Exposure's recent content Is recited here as evidence of the journal's current politicization. This politicization, plus the Inherent competition between the academic/political and museum-culture arenas of criticism, provides the determining context for a concentrated (two articles 1n one Issue, Spring 1985) attack on Jonathan Green's book.

The Huqun1n-Leo Critique

It 1s of course true that the dominant critical perspectives of our times (at this writing, 1986) are the political perspectives of

Marxism and Feminism, and that the dominant critic a l method 1s political "deconstruction," Interpretation 1n those Ideologies' terms. However, such political deconstruction 1s as revealing, when turned upon Itse lf, as when used against visual artistry . For this reason — and because these concerns are now beginning to yield, 1n criticism generally, to a new concern with reception of work by specific Individuals^ — it is appropriate here to "deconstruct" the 200 critiques of the deconstructors, to metacrltlcally analyze, 1n political terms, the political disapproving analyses of Green's book by James R. Hugunln and Vincent Leo.

As an extension of the art museum as functioning social

Institution, Green's book Is a direct threat to political criticism.

In competition with written criticism, curatorial exhibition defines art. The very existence of the museum and Its historical exercise of the critic a l function of curatorshlp — remember the "Armory Show," the "Family of Man," "Mirrors and Windows" -- cannot be Ignored by political criticism; 1n competition with critical writing, the museum defines and privileges art criticism, and art Itself. More, 1t does so In essentially conservative ways which negate the oppositional message of the political critics, as well as threatening their

Influence.

The power of the museum culture provides art with exhibition space, money, publicity, recognition, Interpretive analysis, publicity and prestige. In its selection and treatment of things as art, the museum culture Is a basic cultural source for the social definition and evaluation of art, a source which confers an

Institutionalized and Incontrovertible legitimation, In the eyes of the art wo.Id and of the public, upon whatever It decides to receive

-- and therefore to define and establish -- as "art."

This process 1s self-re1nforc1ng. By this very exercise of the curatorial power to create and define art, the museum culture 201 demonstrates, and thereby legitim ates, Its own c ritical power; a power Inherently competing with the political, cultural, and professional aspirations of political/academic criticism. Such criticism therefore needs to attack, and to de-leg1t1mate, any new, non-radical exercise and expansion of the museum-culture's Initial power of judgement before this power Is acknowledged and recognized

1n the art world, 1n academia, or 1n written criticism Itself; such a necessity 1s particularly acute because of radical criticism's still- precarious Institutional base.

It 1s therefore clear that Jonathan Green's new book, American

Photography; A Critical History, 1945 to the Present, 1s a serious challenge to academic/political criticism. As the first extensive and authoritative c ritic a l/h isto ric a l treatment of postwar American photography, Green's book not only f i l l s a c ritic a l, h istorical, and tutorial vacuum, but also directly defies the growing strength of political criticism 1n the academic arena. The book, by Its publication alone, asserts an unexpected new vitality and an emergent new authority of the museum culture as photocrltlcal arena, an anathematlc proposition to those political critics who see the museum culture as no more than a corrupt extension of an exploitative multinational capitalism and as a rival critical arena too formidable to Ignore.

However, In a predominantly bourgeois-capital 1st America, more than purely political attack 1s needed If that attack 1s to be 202 credible. The tactics of praxis require subtlety and obfuscation — especially If the target 1s a critical analysis, like Green's, which proceeds 1n terms of traditional American myths, archetypes, and

Icons. Hugunln's assault therefore begins with an attempt to cast

Green 1n the role of radical apostate by contrasting Green's approach with that of conservative ''authorities":

The tenor of the book 1s similar to Janson's history of art 1n that a set of master practitioners (all male) are valorized and a set of master themes or myths are proposed as the key to these artists' esthetic production. It 1s this particular perspective of Green's that separates his scholarship from Beaumont Newhall's, the Gernshelms', and Ian Jeffreys' historical narratives. It severely circumscribes the scope of his study, while 1t strikes a blow for nationalism (a popular pastime recently for curators and theoreticians). Green, following Szarkowskl's lead, doesn't pigeonhole photography Into separate, Inflexible compartments based on the photographer's subjective transformation of the subject matter, as did Minor White, Walter Chappell, Dr. Otto Stelnert, and Beaumont Newhall; he 1s not concerned with rigid esthetic categories rooted 1n an epistemologlcal categorization; nor does he agree with Newhall's claim to the dialectical relationship between science and art. Green, however, drops the term "science," opting Instead for Szarkowskl's categories "mirrors" (expressionist or romantic photography) at one pole and "windows" (realist photography) at the other. According to this view, "mirrors" are not "objective," like science, but merely another way the artist encodes his or her response to the world. Szarkowskl had f i r s t sounded his death knell to Newhall's dialectic when he attacked the medium's ability to elucidate factual reality In his Mirrors and Windows catalogue essay: "Photography's direct report of other recent matters of historical Importance seems similarly opaque and superf1c1al...most Issues of Importance cannot be photographed."

Unlike the Gernshelms' A Concise History of Photography, Green downplays the role of technology 1n photo history; technology 1s too universal a criterion from which to argue the unique place of American photography. 203

Nor does he employ Ian Jeffrey's strategy, 1n Photography: A Concise History, which avoids persistent themes 1n photography: ''there has [n]ever been a mainstream 1n photography, only strong currents evident here and there for brief periods. Around 1900 there was, for a time, an International movement In which Europeans and Americans participated, Influencing each other through exhibitions and Illustrated journals. . . " What Jeffrey looks for Instead are photography's "dominant modes," such as "Seeing Nature," "Instantaneous Pictures," and "The Human Condition," categories that are similar to Newhall's chapter headings ("The Faithful Witness," "Instant Vision," and "Documentary"). [29]

Thus, without divulging his own political disagreements with these other c ritic s, Hugunln has, by Implication, excommunicated

Green from the company of established photohlstorlcal authority.

Hugunln then proceeds to attack Green's work by demonstrating its po1nt-by-po1nt non-conformity to a political/critical agenda of his own, an agenda whose Ideological Identity 1s discreetly minimal 1zed. Hugunln's attacks on Green's analysis are not made 1n terms heavy with Hugunln's own convictions; rather, they tacitly

Imply that Hugunln's agenda 1s so completely accepted and so obviously, Inevitably necessary that specific reference to Its theoretical and political sources would be patronizing the reader.

Thus does Hugunln's lite ra ry legerdemain cast radical p o litics 1n the role of conservative aesthetics, and Jonathan Green's orthodox philosophical analysis and Structuralist Inquiry 1n the role of critical heresy.

Vince Leo's attack on Green's work 1s not a direct, external critique; rather, this attack 1s contained 1n the questions adressed 204 to Green 1n an "1nterv1ew-format" article. Leo's agenda 1s, while less elaborate and sophisticated, related to the basically political concerns embraced by Hugunln. Leo's Interview stance Is also sim ilar to Hugunln's critique 1n Implying, tacitly, that any deviation from the Interviewer's unartlculated political stance 1s excommunlcable apostasy.

The antagonism between Leo's and Hugunln's agendas and Green's

Initial analysis emerges 1n several specific points. These points are based, first, In the opposition of Marxist politics to American society and, second, In the professional competition, In various critical arenas, between political criticism and the art world.

First, Green's critical rubric accords pol tics a recognition as

Important but denies It exclusive authority. Green's broad treatment of postwar American photography refuses to appropriate photography as mere data for written criticism . In fact, Green's critique does precisely the opposite: his analysis of the photographic scene

Incorporates political criticism Into that scene Itself, making 1t merely part of the larger Institution of photography. He writes:

"Strictly speaking," Susan Sontag announced 1n October 1973 In the f ir s t of her seven New York Review of Books essays on photography, "It Is doubtful that a photograph can help us to understand anything." Less than a year later, Allan Sekula began a series of a rtic le s In Artforum that applied an equally harsh dictum to the photography document. For Sekula documentary photography has "contributed much to spectacle, to retinal excitations, to voyeurism, to terror, envy and nostalgia, and only a little to the critical understanding of the social world." Sontag's oracular essays, gathered together in the book On Photography (1977), and Sekula's polemical analyses 205 helped In itiate a major change 1n the way photographs were made and read. During the middle to late seventies these two c ritic s and a new group of photography commentators -- Including Max Kozloff, James Hug1n1n, Howard Becker, LeRoy Searle, and A. D. Coleman -- shifted the emphasis of discussion from form alist aesthetics to ethical, conceptual, and sociopolitical Issues. Their discussions challenged the photograph's ultimate value as art and questioned Its role as an Instrument of knowledge, communication, and culture. While there had been attempts 1n the past to deal with the political nature of photography, the dominant strategy of associating photography with the fine arts had tended to obscure Its social function. Up until the seventies the major c ritic a l texts on American photography were ostensibly apologies for photography as art and histories of connolsseurshlp. Even the social photography of the thirties was discussed In terms of aesthetic quality. Art took precedence over social, economic, and cultural meaning. In the seventies renewed Interest 1n philosophy and politics focused the disciplines of linguistics, sociology, anthropology, and Marxist thought on the photographic enterprise, revealing photography as social history and pointing out the paradoxes at the heart of photographic reality, observation, and art. The critics of the seventies were out to raise fundamental questions of eplstemology and ontology. They wanted nothing less than to pin down the moral and Ideational content and structure of the medium. Perhaps only once before -- 1n the early teens when St1egl1tz rejected photo-Impressionism for a photography that synthesized actual observation and formalism — had American photography undergone such a radical restructuring of critical thought.

. . . This new criticism also derived, of course, from the concept and Idea a rt that decades of modernism had fostered. Some measure of social consciousness and political commentary has always been the Inevitable outgrowth of modernism, as abstract and express1on1st1c Ideas are displaced onto concrete political Issues. One of the major principles of modernist thought has been the creation of an art that would force reflection on the conditions of Its own construction. Investigations of those conditions necessarily brought about a rediscovery of the culture that generated the structure of the art.

. . . In the case of Arbus, both Sontag and Sekula go out of their way to deny the possibility of a carnal visual 206

understanding of her work. But their extended protest suggests an uneasiness not only with Arbus's morality but with the power of visual knowledge; 1t suggests that on some level they understand that Arbus was overwhelmed not by tract or doctrine but by the visual discovery of terror. If Sekula's rhetoric 1s Marxist, 1t 1s also stridently Puritanical. Photography 1s conceived to be not the discovery of truth but the elaboration of doctrines already known. His objections to modernism and his praise for the plain style parallel the Puritan encouragement of an ethical art that would provide the widest possible comprehension. The Puritan Insistence on Iconography rather than visual Invention or perception Is also shared by Sekula. He writes that the "meaning of an art work ought to be regarded as contingent," but he makes that contingency wholly dependent on language and Ideology, Ignoring the visual contingencies supplied by the entire history of visual representation. Both Sekula and Sontag fin ally succumb to the most American of values: a Puritanical d istru st for graven Images. Sontag's exegesis, 1n particular, 1s hostile to American Idealism. With a profound d istru st for the democracy t r photography's use, Sontag fears Whitman's visionary egalitarianism. Behind her prose 1s a subtle elitism that assumes the hierarchy of the Intelligentsia over the proletariat. In the end, both Sontag and Sekula believe In the superiority of the literary artist over the visual one. [30]

Thus, Green takes what 1s, 1n effect, a metacrltlcal stance toward political critique: he makes political photocr1t1c1sm the subject of his own historical criticism by considering 1t as merely another part of the photographic "scene." This 1s the antithesis of

Marxist criticism's demand that photography, with all culture, bo absorbed Into Marxism's own considerations of cultural phenomena, politically Interpreted; Marxist criticism ruthlessly subjects photographic Institutions to analysis of the conditions of their production, but 1t cannot tolerate Its own exposure to such metacritique. 207

Linda Andre recently wrote, "All non-d1alect1cal criticism must be considered, not only Irrelevant, but possibly even dangerous."^

Green's work defies this Imperative; a defiance which Invites retaliation. At all costs, political criticism must avoid Its own metacrltlcal analysis; to subject political criticism to the logic of

Its own class-struggle analysis can only be an embarrassing "ad homlnem." It must therefore struggle to conceal Its own techniques of manipulation. (Like the Wizard revealed working the machinery of his Illusions behind a screen, political criticism can only cry out

"Iam the great and terrible Oz! Pay no attention to the manbehind the curtain!")

Second, Jonathan Green's American Photography displays a conventional, liberal, generalized humanism which rises above political struggle 1n Its tender regard for humankind. As the writings of Althusser and Sekula clearly demonstrate, such "old fashioned, abstract" humanism may be regarded In Marxist circles as a devolution Into Philosophical Idealism and as a deliberate aesthetlclzatlon and romant1c1zat1on of the effects of bourgeois oppression. For example, Sekula writes:

The passage of the photograph from report to metaphor (and of photographer from reporter to genius) 1n the service of liberalism 1s celebrated 1n one of the more bizarre pieces on photography ever written. This 1s the enemy: "Strand believes In human values, In social Ideals, In decency and 1n truth. These are not cliches to him. . . ." (emphasis mine.) 208

The celebration of abstract humanity becomes, 1n any given political situation, the celebration of the dignity of the passive victim. [32]

And Althusser concludes his book For Marx with these words:

Simply put, the recourse to ethics so deeply Inscribed 1n every humanist Ideology may play the part of an Imaginary treatment of real problems. Once known, these problems are posed 1n precise terms; they are organizational problems of the forms of economic life , political life, and Individual life .... we must get down to the concrete problems themselves, . . . 1f we are to produce the historical transformation whose necessity was thought by Marx. . . . [33]

A political ant1-aesthet1c which sees such humanist heroes as

Paul Strand and W. Eugene Smith as lackeys of capitalism and as obstructions to socialist progress cannot be expected to deal kindly with the humanist ethics and aesthetics upon which Jonathan Green founds his c ritical h1stor1c1sm. To activ ist Marxism, bourgeois humanism 1s morally worse than simple capitalist reaction. This 1s because bourgeois humanism 1s, 1n addition to Its status as

Ideological deviation, a wellsprlng of political opposition to

Marxism; 1t 1s the ethical foundation of that "old-fashioned" political liberalism which sees social justice as emanating, at least partly, from Individual social opportunity rather than from mass political struggle. On these grounds, Green's work 1s, 1n Its liberal rhetoric, doubly damned. Here, 1n the hidden logic of a

Marxist political analysis which Incorporates humanist liberalism into capitalist reaction with the slogan "No Real Change," Is the 209 motivation for Hugunln's false Implication of sim ilarity between

Green's understanding of the American ethos and that of Jerry

Felwell.34

Third, Green's book adopts an almost Idealist view of the relationship between the great "American Myths" — Democracy, the

Frontier, Freedom, Individualism -- and the translation of these myths Into the populist literary rhetoric of Walt Whitman and Into the visual rhetoric of American photography. To Marxist p olltlcs- through-cultural-actlon, such American Ideals are, as Sekula has w ritten, the "enemy."

Green's almost "conceptual art" analysis of photography-as-1dea

Is a critic a l methodology vigorously condemned by Marxist anti- aesthetic theory. It smacks of a post-Platonic Idealism which 1s an heretical antithesis to the objectlvlst, economic determinism which rules much Marxist Ideology; Green stands doctrinally condemned here, with Hegel himself. (The remnants of Idealism 1n Marxist theory are the project of Althusser's exorcism 1n For Marx; as Althusser put It,

"One phantom Is more especially crucial than any other today, the shade of Hegel. To drive this phantom back Into the night, we need

. . . a little more Marxist light on Hegel himself."3^

And, 1n Hegel's stead, upon such as the writings of Jonathan

Green.

Fourth, Green's Critical History organizes Its e lf, Internally, by an eclectic expansion of a traditional, art-h1story outline. 210

Green is concerned with time periods, movements, a rtis ts , and the

Influence upon them of literature, the other visual arts, social and p o litical movements; he dwells upon the archetypical American Ideals, myths, and ways of seeing. All these, 1n Green's work, relate the visual Imagery of photography to sim ilar forces and Images) and their similar, concurrent power) 1n other areas of culture.

The t1me-movement-art1st-eulture paradigm Interferes (If only by necessary Implication here, since Green's book does not address the problem) with the reinvention of art history 1n terms of a Marxist model: subject m atter-artifact-culture-superstructure-base. For example, 1n this model a German "New Objectivity" photograph of

Industrial waste 1s more than an aesthetic object, more than a work of art. It Is a political document of the tendencies of capitalist industrialism toward waste, exploitation, and environmental spoilage.

It 1s also a demonstration of capitalist art's function as a romanticizing agent for bourgeois-capital 1st Industrial depredation: art "beautifies" the dump by Imposing upon 1t the perceptual filter of aesthetic rules of formal composition. Conversely, the Image also demonstrates, 1n the Marxist view, the corruption and self-interest of the museum culture which, by exhibiting such "art," legitim izes the exploitative nature of the c ap italist economic system.

Questions of right and wrong, of political loyalty, and of environmentalist ideology aside, this example (not, I repeat, from

Green's book) illustrates how a contemporarily eclectic, art-h1story 211 analysis of photographic Images -- an analysis such as that of

Jonathan Green — can Impede the efforts of Left criticism to supply a new photographic taxonomy tailored to a hostile political critique of American society. On these grounds, Green's book 1s an Inevitable target for Left criticism ; thus Hugunln's charge that Green's work 1s depol1t1c1zed, that 1t expresses "a broad humanism excluding any political agenda."3^

Fifth, one of the current sub-projects of Poststructural1st and political critics 1s the reinvention of photographic history 1n terms of the alienated "Other." Left criticism tends to privilege unseen

"underground" work, and to promote the publlcally visible photography done by members of vlctlm-groups of capitalism, as the only legitim ate American photography and the only work worthy of positive critical notice. Vince Leo's Interview query about "alternative photography" as missing from Green's history37 1s a case 1n point:

Green's majorltarlan history Ignores the Left Imperative for the political reinvention of history; 1n this he receives little sympathy

1n the perspectives of Hugunln or Leo.

Sixth, 1n his recent book Green himself responds with evident personal empathy to many of the American archetypal Ideals; he also displays a sensitive aesthetic response to much of the photographic work he discusses. In the present, such positive emotional and aesthetic reaction 1s contrary to the current Marxist canon of the

"ant1-aesthet1c;" 1n the past, 1n another, more traditional Marxist 212 theoretical context, Green's responses would have been proscribed as

"decadent bourgeois romanticism." Whatever the labels, new or old,

Green stands Indicted — with Roland Barthes — for what Michael

Starenko has called "the heresy of sentiment." To be "politically correct," all human feeling must now be ruthlessly anaesthetized.

Seventh, while Marxist Ideology herolzes only collectives,

Green's book often ascribes to American photography a governing ethos of Individualism. This emerges 1n Green's organization of photohistory 1n what Hugunln condemns as "a pantheon of auteurs" and

"extravagant biographies" of these auteurs.38 Similarly rejected by

Hugunln 1s Green's attribution of cultural Influence to Walt

Whitman's poetic apotheosis of populist Individualism.38

On the same point, Green's work also contains a characterization of Strand's "inherited faith 1n the common man" as a "socialism based not on Institutions but on the sanctity of the Individual."40 This

Interpretation 1s directly subversive of Marxist Interpretations of

American social reality; Interpretations which require personal

Individuality to be restricted to Soc1al1st-Real1sm stereotypes of exploitation of the masses by rapacious entrepreneurs . In Socialist

Realism, the concept of the human being as free-agent 1s dismissed as the "myth of the bourgeois Individual;" 1n official Socialist art, the Individual hero 1s replaced by the valorized masses.

Eighth, Green's work discusses the Influence upon contemporary photography of recent linguistic theory. However, (as discussed 213 above) Green's own position on the precise relationship between linguistics and the visual Image may be closer to a Derrldean omnl- determlnlsm than to Marxist hermeneutics, or to Foucault's emphasis on the deconstruction of all discourse 1n terms of Its emanation from power. But Hugunln writes:

Green's efforts would have been better served by expanding his book to Include a more sociological reading of the medium, 1f at the price of his chosen — and narrower — discussion of representation. Lacking such a broader focus, Green's study falls to address those many areas 1n which, as Victor Burgln notes, "Photography Inserts Itself Into the networks of what Foucault calls the 'capillary action' of power through Its contrlbtulon to the nexus of desire and representation, which Includes, for example the question of who and/or what 1s represented and how.{29}" It 1s this nexus of desire and representation to which Green devotes too little attention. [41]

The fact that Hugunln's final, closing point 1s a chiding of

Green for his distance from Foucault reveals the centrality of power and politics 1n Hugunln's critique.

Ninth, Green's 11st of historically significant (1n th eir own time) masters of photography omits an emphasis on women, as a politicized class though not as Individuals, and his analysis of historical forces accurately omits Feminism as a serious photographic

Influence 1n times when 1t was, 1n fact, nut such a force. His

Individualist presentation therefore manages to alienate some of the

Feminist political sentiment within currently established circles of photographic criticism.

This 1s unfortunate, for It places Feminist criticism Into the position of effectively denying the Importance of the many women 214 photographers dealt with by Green: Diane Arbus, Barbara Blondeau,

Margaret Bourke-White, Julia Margaret Cameron, Linda Connor, Marie

Coslndas, Eileen Cowin, Barbara Crane, Imogen Cunningham, Judy Dater,

Jan Groover, Betty Hahn, Estelle Keech, Dorothea Lange, Helen Levitt,

Jacqueline Livingston, Wendy Snyder MacNell, Llsette Model, Ardlne

Nelson, Donna-Lee Phillips, Susan Woodley Raines, Nancy Rexroth,

Merldel Rubensteln, Alleen Smith, Eve Sonneman, Deborah Turbevllle,

Marian Post-Wolcott, and others.

This, I submit, Is a group which speaks for Its e lf as evidence of Green's concern with women photographers, both as photographers and as women.

Tenth, 1t should be noted that not all of the Leo-Hugun1n objection to Green's work 1s necessarily oppositional only to capitalism, to bourgeois patrlarchlal culture, or to the art world.

Some of 1t seems reflective of another politics, of another basic cultural conflict, both contemporary and historic: the war between arts and letters.

This war Informs a contemporary eplstemologlcal controversy concerning the comparative validity and power of the visual arts

(seeing) versus rational analysis (writing). In the world of occupations, this controversy rationalizes a hidden agenda: a subterranean dispute over the professional status of the artist versus that of the critic. If the visual arts can tell us more than can writing, then criticism 1s reduced to the servile status of the 215 handmaiden of the arts; but If writing can provide us with knowledge and wisdom while vision cannot, then the visual arts are reduced to mere data for the Intellectual analysis of the critical writer.

Jonathan Green — himself a photographer, visual artist, writer, and critic — awards no laurels to either faction 1n this camouflaged competition. While writing analytically about photography as visual art, he refuses to join his extreme Suassurlan colleagues 1n claiming absolute dominance for the written word. Worse -- from the viewpoint of the Uterary-orlented critics -- he strips this professional competition of Its eplstemologlcal disguise 1n his chapter "Only a

Language Experiment."

Green, the curator, must s till believe 1n tht Informational power and evidential validity of Images, but political w riters need not; they need believe only 1n writing. Green has quoted Sekula, for example, as saying that documentary photography "had contributed much to spectacle, to retinal excitations, to voyeurism, to terror, envy, and nostalgia, and only a little to the critical understanding of the social world."42 Green would cling to the contrary view that the photograph Itself, as well as the litany of direct photographic experiences set forth by Sekula, may well provide the critic — as the aesthetic, feeling, visual being traditionally required for the critical role, and as cultural interpreter of myths and visual Icons

-- with a "critical understanding" as vital and Informational as the 216

Iron verbal abstractions of dialectical material1sm or linguistic

"deconstruction."

In a classic statement* Marshall McLuhan observed that photography has no syntax and cannot be understood 1n the terms of the purely literary languages. But the no-more-than-llterary critic, believing that eplstemology rests only upon epistles, 1s threatened by Green's work, by Its faith 1n the significance of the visual, and by Its real-world documentary authenticity. Green persists 1n the belief -- held 1n great reverence among the original documentarlans of the Great Depression — that truth comes from vision, from participation; 1t begins with the statement "I was there." And he was there, not only as a "participant observer" 1n the anthropological sense, but as an actual practitioner of the photographic art he later analyzes. Therefore, Green speaks with the authority of the art1st-as-observer, an authority challenging the critical distancing, the Isolated, non-v1sual externality of the primarily literary critic.

Eleventh, and finally, 1t 1s a truism that the hallmark of the alienated Intellectual 1n any society 1s elitist rejection of

Indigenous culture. This tendency persists 1n the Ideological orientations of today's 1ntellectual1st critics; the appeal of

Marxism 1s not only 1n Its resentments, but 1n its exoticism. As

Hugunln puts 1t 1n his rejection of Green's critique of Sekula, "Ear from harkenlng back to our dour forefathers, [those] theorists and 217

practitioners whose beliefs are consonant with Sekula actually have derived th eir Influences mainly from European twentieth century

Marxist/postmodernist critics: Roland Barthes, Louis Althusser,

Jacques Lacan, Terry Eagleton, Victor Burgln and others."^ This, of course, 1s Intended as a fatally negative condemnation of Green's democratic concentration upon Indigenous American culture: the pretensions of elitist literary culture decree that critical

Ideology, like wine, cannot be both domestic and good.

Green's Book: My Evaluation

In brief, then, the major opposition of the Leo-Hugun1n critiques rest upon major Impacts of Green's work upon political/

Intellectual criticism's occupational aspirations. These ambitions are, first, advancement to a position of professional domination over the visual art of photography, second; achievement of an economically and politically protected position of academic orthodoxy, and third, elimination of the critical competition of the museum culture and the curator as deflners of art and practitioners of criticism.

Therefore, Green's final standing 1n the academic/intellectual arena Is In the hands of history. If academic (and avant-garde) criticism become permanently dedicated to professionalizing the discourse of radical politics, Green's work will continue to receive no more applause (In the academic arena, at least) than that accorded by Leo and Hugunln. If, on the other hand, academic photocriticism 218

redirects Itself to a democratic populism, to philosophical

Interpretation, to a neo-Ideal 1st or neo-Structural1st renaissance,

or to an eclectic, Modernist traditionalism 1n the manner of

Szarkowskl, Green's work and Intellectual leadership will receive the

highest recognition as seminal 1n these redirections.

Despite Douglas Crimp's declaration of the death of curatorshlp

1n "On the Museum's Ruins,the museum as a contemporary artistic

and social institution 1s alive, well, and Increasingly healthy.

Despite the notice of obituary Implied 1n Brian Wallis' volume entitled Art After Modernism, ^ Modernist a rt and criticism are also doing nicely. On a more practical level, 1t appears that Jurgen

Habermas' pronouncement of Modernism as an Incomplete, and s till ongoing, project of the extension of Enlightenment Ideals (1n art and culture) Is much more realistic than Postmodern, political reinventions of the ageless Jeremiad "art 1s dead."

Whatever the future of academic photocr1t1c1sm, the a rt world and the museum culture will go forward on their own. On the basis of his American Photography, Green's photographic standing 1n that arena seems pre-eminent. There 1s presently no work, either critic a l or histo rical, which competes with Green's volume as a philosophical and mythic analysis, and as a documentary record, of recent American photography.

Nor with Green's point of view. As Hugunln noted, the contemporary establishment of political, deconstructionist critics 1s 219

Inspired by such cadres as the British Marxist, Terry Eagleton. As

Eagleton himself demands the "death of literature" as a consequence

of the political destruction of the society which produces 1t,^ so

that photocriticism Inspired by Eagleton's viewpoint demands, 1n effect, the "death of photography" as currently practiced.

There 1s none of this ruthless nihilism 1n Green's work. His writing continues 1n the classical traditions of Modernism and

Humanist Liberalism, continuing his currently attacked but joyously constructive Interest 1n photography as something of value to viewer, society, and photographer.

Contrary to Brian Wallis' denigration of Modernist criticism,47

1t need not aspire to be "value-free." Criticism such as that of

Jonathan Green 1s simply based on other values. The feelings and

Ideals which Inform his work and reveal Its worth are, I think,

Incarnate 1n his own words about the Ethical Culture Society and Walt

Whitman:

The Ethical Culture Society, founded 1n New York 1n the eighteen seventies, was one of the dozens of secular and religious groups and sects that surfaced after the Civil War In an attempt to adjust traditional beliefs to the new s p irit of a cooperative commonwealth. It may be seen as a direct outgrowth of the American Transcendental- 1st movement. It was built on the decidedly American confluence of Puritanism and egalitarianism , to which 1t added Its own dash of European Jewish Intellectuallsm . The society was a concrete realization of Whitman's democratic manifesto. In the 1855 Preface to Leaves of Grass, he had written: "America does not repel the past or what 1t has produced under Its forms, or amid other p o litic s, or the Idea of castes, or the old religions. . . . [It] accepts the lessons with calmness . . . while the life which served 220

Its requirements has passed Into the new life of new forms. . . . "This 1s what you shall do: Love the earth and the sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and the crazy, devote your Income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God. . . [48]

Here, I think, 1s the optical prescription for the Whltmanesque spectacles which articulate Green's vision of American photography. 221

FOOTNOTES: CHAPTER VII

Brian WalHs; ed., Introduction to Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation, (Boston, Godlne, coop. New Mus. Contemp. Art, NY, 1984), pp. x1-x111.

Minor White and Jonathan Green, Celebrations, (Mlllerton, NY, Aperture, 1974), p. 15.

Newsletter, Friends of Photography, 6 June 1986.

Parker Tyler, Magic and Myth of the Movies, (Simon and Schuster, 19/0).

Claude Lev1-Straus, The Raw and the Cooked: Introduction to a Science of Mythology- 1, (New York, Harper & Row, 1969.) See also his Tne~w*vsge M1nd, (London, 1966) and other works.

Jonathan Green, American Photography: A Critical History, 1945 to the Present, (New York, Harry M. Abrams, 1984), pp. 9-10.

Giles Deleuze, "Plato and the Simulacrum" trans. Rosalind Kraus, October 27, (Winter, 1983), pp. 45-56.

Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays, (New York, Atheneum Press, 1966).

C. G. Jung, Analytical Psychology, Its Theory and Practice (The Tavistock Lectures), (New York, Vintage Books, Random House, 1968).

Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction, (Minneapolis, Univ. M1nn. Press, 1983), p. 92.

Ibid., p. 137-134.

Lev1-Straus, Savage Mind, (footnote 3), supra, p. 22.

Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author," Image, Music, Text (New York, Hill & Wang, 1977), pp. 143-148. 222

Discussing Derrldean thought, Terry Eagleton writes: "There 1s no concept which 1s not embroiled In an open-ended play of signification, shot through with the traces and fragments of other Ideas. . . . Since the meaning of a sign 1s a matter of what the sign 1s not. Its meaning Is always 1n some sense absent from 1t too. Meaning, If you like, 1s scattered or dispersed along the whole chain of s1gn1f1ers; 1t cannot be easily nailed down, 1t 1s never fully present 1n any one sign alone, but 1s rather a kind of constant flickering of presence and absence." Eagleton, Literary Theory, supra, pp. 128 and 131.

Ibid., p. 93.

Roland Barthes, trans. Annette Lavers, Mythologies, (New York, H ill & Wang, 1972).

Green, American Photography, (footnote 4), supra, pp. 32-33.

Vincent Leo and Joachim Brohm, "A Cr1t1c1al Interview with Jonathan Green," Exposure 23.1, (Spring, 1985), pp. 16-20.

Ibid., and: James R. Hugunln, "Distinctly American," Exposure 23.1, (Spring, 1985), pp. 21-31.

James Hugunln, "The Map 1s not the Territory," Exposure 22.1 (Spring, 1984), pp. 5-15.

Jan Z1ta Grover and David Jacobs, "Introduction," Exposure 22.3 (Fall, 1984), p. 4.

Linda Andre, "Dialectical Criticism and Photography," Exposure 22.4, (Winter, 1984), p. 17.

Supra, footnotes 18 and 19.

Jan Z1ta Grover, "Editorial: Putting Feminism 1n the Classroom," Exposure 23.2, (Summer, 1985), pp. 22-27.

Deborah Bright, "Of Mother Nature and Marlboro Men," Exposure 23.4, (Winter, 1985), pp. 5-18.

David Jacobs, "Editorial," Exposure 24.1, (Spring, 1986), p. 5.

Simon Watney, "Photography-Educatlon-Theory," and Richard Bolton, "One Hand Washes the Other: On the Rephotographic Survey Project," Exposure 24.1, (Spring, 1986), pp. 13-16 and 42-49. 223

(28) For example, "The Reception of Films," special Issue of Wide Angle, Vol. 8, no. 1, (Spring, 1986).

(29) James R. Hugunln, "Distinctly American,5' (footnote 17), supra, pp. 21-22.

(30) Green, American Photography, (footnote 4), supra, pp. 193-195.

(31) Supra, (footnote 20).

(32) Allan Sekula, "On the Invention of Photographic Meaning," Artforum, Jan. 1975, p. 45.

(33) Louis Althusser, trans. Ben Brewster, For Marx, (London, New Left Books, 1977), p. 247.

(34) Hugunln, "Distinctly American," supra, p. 26.

(35) Althusser, For Marx, supra, p. 116.

(36) Hugunln, "Distinctly American," (footnote 17), supra, p. 26.

(37) Leo/Brohm, "Interview," (footnote 16), supra, pp. 18-19.

(38) Hugunln, "D istinctly American," (footnote 17), supra, pp. 23-25.

(39) Ibid., pp, 23-24.

(40) Green, American Photography, (footnote 4), supra, p. 19.

(41) Hugunln, "D istinctly American," (footnote 17), supra, pp. 30-31.

(42) Green, American Photography, (footnote 4), supra, p. 193.

(43) Hugunln, "D istinctly American," (footnote 17), supra, p. 27.

(44) October 13 (Summer, 1980).

(45) Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation, Brian WalHs, ed., (New York, New Museum of Contemporary Art, bavld R. Godlne, pub., Boston, 1984).

(46) Eagleton, Literary Theory, (footnote 8), supra, p. 194 ff, esp. p. 217.

(47) WalHs, Art After Modernism, (footnote 43), supra, p. 1.

(48) Green, American Photography, (footnote 4), supra, p. 18. CHAPTER VIII

SUGGESTIONS FOR NEW RESEARCH AND CRITICISM:

A NEW STRUCTURAL PARADIGM FOR PHOTOGRAPHIC THEORY

Observations on Photographic Academia

In the May, 1986 Issue of Afterimage, Managing Editor David

Trend Included these words In his report on the 1986 National

Conference of the Society for Photographic Education:

It's no secret that the Institutions of art photography are 1n decay, ... within ... the university system. But these Issues are rarely discussed. What about declining enrollments? Changing curricula? Continued policies of retrenchment? Pressures against affirm ative action? Cutbacks In government student-loan support? The termination of NEA grants for critics? ... In short, what about the field? If SPE doesn't start talking about these Issues soon, there will be no place for 1t to stand, different or the same.

Trend's assessment of the situation, as quoted above, 1s correct. The "photography boom" has peaked, reversed Itse lf, and disappeared; academic photography 1s now static. Student enrollments are down. Grants and loans for students and artists are shrinking.

Faculty vacancies are rare, while qualified applicants for such vacancies are often reported to number 1n the dozens to the hundreds.

Few new academic photography programs are now 1n view, and pressures to dissolve existing programs, with placements of their curricula within other departments, have been experienced 1n some colleges.

224 225

Within existing photography departments, Ideological conflict between faculty/student factions 1s often serious and sometimes crippling; the recent experience of The Ohio State University's Department of

Photography and Cinema — rapid staff expansion and contraction, tenure bottles, budget crises, administrative turnover, lawsuits,

Interpersonal conflict — 1s a case 1n point.

These problems 1n photographic academia have been echoed within the organization which represents 1t: The Society for Photographic

Education. Attendance at the national conferences of the SPE has declined. Internal conflict within the organization Itself -- conflict centered upon minority demands for conversion of the

Society's conferences, concerns, and scholarly journal to radical political agenda -- threaten the national organization with functional paralysis and with eventual schism along political lines.

What are the causes of this shrinkage 1n student enrollments, faculty jobs, new programs, and grant funds? What are the causes of the apparent diminution of general academic support for photographic programs and budgets? What are the reasons behind the Ideological conflict evident within the field?

Certain general causes are both obvious and fundamental. One such 1s the attrition of fiscal support for the arts and humanities within the granting foundations supported by government -- an attrition expressing the unfriendly stance of a business-oriented, conservative Federal administration -- as well as the emphasis 226

throughout Federal government on budget reductions 1n nearly every

area.

Another basic cause of the currently static condition of

photographic academia 1s an Inevitable contraction following the

recent period of overexpansion. In the nineteen-sixties and early

seventies, photographic education rapidly Increased as a component

of higher education. Many new academic departments were formed,

existing programs were expanded, new faculty were hired, student enrollment rose rapidly, and degreed graduates soon became a glut on

the academic market.

Since the curricular focus of most of the newly expanded

Instruction was upon photography as a fine ar*. and since M.A. and

M.F.A. graduates 1n art photography programs have few markets for

their credentials outside academia Itself, the job opportunities for photography graduates proved to be only a small proportion of those

receiving the degrees. Thus, 1n the nineteen-eighties, the economic depression and cyclical decline experienced by college teaching candidates 1n general has been experienced 1n the photographic field

1n comparatively extreme dimensions.

It 1s arguable that certain other factors have also been

Influential 1n the current stagnation. These are factors less conspicuous, dramatic, and direct 1n their impact than the decline 1n federal funding and the oversupply of photographic Instructors. 227

Such additional Influences Include the possibility that photographic faculty recruited during the boom period might often have been — 1n comparison to faculty 1n new established fields -- less qualified and less capable Instructors. It 1s also probable that the "photographic boom" was, In part, a fad based on a newly- popularized 35 mm camera technology which has been replaced in popular affection by newer fads: the emerging new technologies 1n video and computers.

There 1s, 1n addition, the p ossibility that photography Its e lf, as a personal activity, 1s an Intrinsically Individualistic, express1on1st1c, documentary/artistic, sometimes even mystical endeavor which found Its e lf more compatible with the Individualism and soc1al/pol1t1cal concerns of the sixties, and with the narcissism of the seventies, than with the ethic of economic striving prominent

1n the present decade.

Another factor contributing to the decline of academic photography might He 1n academic aesthetics: first, the entry-level emphasis on black and white Images (an aesthetic contrary to the color-or1entat1on of movies, video, and color snapshot photography); second, the general academic denigration of color transparencies, a very popular personal a rt form among prospective photography students.

Finally, there 1s the possible Importance of the organizational ambiguity of photography programs within academic bureaucracy. Is 228 photography "properly" structured, as an Instructional activity, within colleges and departments of Fine Arts? Communications?

Engineering or other technology? Should photographic Instruction be combined with that of film? Video? Journalism? Other arts and media? Should photography be considered an Independent discipline?

These questions are far from settled, and the widespread conflicts of educational jurisdiction which these questions engender might be expected to retard the development of photographic Instruction, within higher education, under any economic circumstances.

However, the effect of these possible Influences upon the course of photographic decline and stasis within higher education,

Interesting a - they may be, are outside the scope of this study.

They are mentioned here merely as additional background, as factors which, though speculative and unproven In their Impact, do at least form part of the larger complex of problems within photographic academia. They will also be outside the scope of this study for other reasons: they already have been recognized and discussed within professional circles, or have been documented and discussed within the professional literature, or are special Instances of more general, theoretical problems within academic areas alien to this study's specific focus on photography's unconfronted problem: anti- photographic criticism. 229

The Use and Value of Photographic Theory

One of the causes of the prominence of ant1-photograph1c criticism Is the lack of academic consensus on the desirability of other theoretical approaches; political and linguistic theory has fille d a vacuum.

Perhaps we may begin a response to this problem by considering the kinds of "theory." There are explanatory or "soft" theories which qualitatively describe events, post priori, on levels of analysis removed from the facts; these are the theories of history, criticism , and the social sciences. There are predictive or "hard" theories, which attempt not only to explain, but also to quantita­ tively predict, a priori, events to be caused, later 1n time, by variations 1n the elements contained 1n the theoretical structure; such theories are the basis of the physical sciences. There are also

"field theories," which deal with events neither before nor after the facts, but synchronistically. Specific, predictive applications of any of these kinds of theories to events are called theoretical hypotheses. Classically, theories are considered to be dlsproven when their predictive hypotheses prove Invalid; more recently,

"false" hypotheses are considered useful 1n modifying theory to account for test results. Such shifting from a priori to post priori use of theory 1s called "grounding."*

Theories may be either "hard" or "soft" and may find uses 1n any field of knowledge. "Soft" theory rtny Include Speculative 230

theoretical systems (theories not subject to empirical test). These

are philosophical theories* If they describe either the phenomenal or

the objective world; 1f they relate basically to themselves, by means

of abstract concepts with precise, unvarying 1nter-relat1onsh1ps,

they are mathematical theories. There are also normative, prosaic

theories, "theories of practice." These are rules or guidelines for

practical action rather than for understanding. "Practical" theories

may, or may not, relate to explanations or predictions on other

levels of analysis; 1t 1s their purpose to help change facts, not to

explain or predict them.2

"Practical" or speculative theory may be used to explain,

predict, justify, guide, legitimate, or Inspire practice. In

photography, theory 1s of great usefulness to critics, historians,

and collectors; 1t 1s, 1n fact, prerequisite to most rationally

organized activity In all those fields. A historian needs theory to

give his work Import and analytical significance, to raise his description above meaningless drama or dumb record. A critic must

have some conceptual basis for the conventionally standard critical procedure of description, analysis, Interpretation, and evaluation;

without theory his work 1s mere personal prejudice or Intellectually meaningless "revue." The collector requires some sort of theoretical approach 1f his collections are to be a good emotional or financial

Investment, even 1f his theories of value are of a primitive and 231 popular sort. The curator needs theory 1n order to decide upon, present, and Interpret his exhibits.

History, criticism, collection, and curating are mindless without theory. While mindlessness 1n these fields may be amusing, a to tally Intuitive approach to work 1n these fields does not contribute to Its rationality or value. The historian who does not let the observed facts Influence his analysis, the critic for whom content description and celebrity worship are the real product of the

"criticism," the collector or curator who "doesn't understand, but knows what he Hkes," are perhaps engaging 1n Idiosyncratic forms of personal "art" rather than 1n professional activity as generally understood and respected.

Tradesmen 1n photography may be Interested mostly 1n a technically-based "theory of practice," theory that seems to be somewhat Independent of larger, aesthetic and Intellectual/academic considerations. Technical developments have been well theorized, but this "how to do 1t" theory has historically responded more to popular and market demand than to academic or critical theory. Snapshots, commercial portraits, photojournalism, advertising, etc., react almost entirely to popular and commercial demand. Therefore, an

Immediate and startling Impact upon the quotidian practice of "trade" photography cannot be predicted as a result of theoretical advances.

I do, on the other hand, foresee ju st such an Impact on the vanguard of art photography by the application of the structure and 232

rubrics proposed 1n the visual model of photographic theory developed

la te r In this chapter. Inspiration for change may also be provided

to curators, and to photohistory andphotocrltldsm, by the model's

revelation of new areas worthy of study.

My hopes of stimulating photographic activity by the exposition

of theory are based on history. Examples abound of the use of theory

by critics, curators, and practitioners as the basis of new "schools"

of artistic output, curatorial exposition, and critical analysis.

Artists, critics, and curators often have, by theoretically

expounding their own or others' work, produced "great leaps forward"

1n photographic history. Examples would Include Peter Henry Emerson

and his "naturalistic photography," Ste1gl1tz's Camerawork journal,

Ste1gl1tz's "Photo-Session"^ and "Straight Photography" movements,

and Ansel Adams' "Zone System."4 More recently, there are the Zen-

based photographic meditations of Minor White, the essentially

Existentialist, formal/procedural experimentations of Gary Wlnogrand

and Lee Frledlander,^ and the Humanist photojournalism of W. Eugene

Smith.6

Theory emerges from the practice of curators as well as that of

artists; curatorial criticism 1s historically prominent 1n the use of

theory to stimulate change. Ste1gl1tz's "Armory Show" Introduced to each other European Modern Art, American photography, and the

American public. Newhall's photographic power at MOMA advanced

photography further down the road of recognition as established, 233 received fine art. Then, Stelchen's MOMA directorate provided

Immense popular sensitization to the concept of photography as universal medium of communication through his world-touring Family of Man show. The current Director, John Szarkowskl, has used Mirrors and Windows exhibition, as well as his books The Photographer's Eye and Looking at Photographs, to establish photography as a unique, self-contained artistic medium with Its own theoretical principles of visual aesthetics.

Theory emerges also from the work of c ritic s whose orientation

1s not curatorial, but literary. The current critical movement toward an exclusively Marxist photographic analysis led by such as

Allan Sekula,^ and the equally contemporary obsession with commerc1al-stereotype-as-art1st1c-subject, led by Post-Structuralist c ritic s such as Rosalind Krauss®, and Douglas Crimp,^ are also centered upon theory.

Arguably, recognition of a new theoretical direction provides the justification for an artistic (and perhaps also curatorial and c ritic a l) "movement;" the presence of a "movement" creates, 1n turn, a stimulus to new work which extends the boundaries of the movement's own approach.

For Instance, any photographer who wishes to do so can produce new black and white prints which can be referred to, and accepted, as worthy exemplars of the "Zone System" and the "Fine Print." This 1s done through their handling of the spectrum of subject lumlnence, the 234 reproduction of fine detail, and the representation of a full range of possible Image tones. Such work would be accepted, regardless of

Its redundancy of the work of Adams, Weston, Sexton, etc., because 1t

1s within a firmly established aesthetic tradition and a carefully articulated body of technical theory. On the other hand, similarly careful color work, which 1s not supported by a body of articulated and elaborated theory, might well be rejected as a plagiarism or mere

Imitation of Joel Meyerowltz or William Eggleston.

The Need for a New Structure of Photographic Theory

In brief, the use of theory -- by photographic artists, critics, and curators -- 1s often the basis for change, and the stimulus to new production, 1n the photographic arts. Arguably, a renaissance of

Interest 1n, and exploration of new areas within, the diverse realms of photographic theory might provide the Impetus for new artistic and technical advances 1n photography.

As a first step, this study argues the present need for "an organized, systematically encompassing body of photographic theory."

However, It does not suggest the need for a single, or a new, or an exclusive conceptual principle upon which would be promulgated a single, new, or exclusive claim to an Imaginary mantle as the theory of photography. Far too many such exclus1v1st1c claims already exist; claims which provide theoretical rationales for academic turmoil. Rather, this study supports the need for a systematic conceptual structure upon which can be organized, and within which 235 can be encompassed, the various, presently competing theoretical approaches to the analysis of those varying activities we call photography.

There 1s no demonstrable need for, or even, perhaps, possibility of, a Physics-model, E1nste1n1an "general theory of photographic relativity" which will "explain everything." Rather, what 1s both needed and possible, at this point 1n the development of theory, 1s a sort of "Mendelyeev's table" of photographic theory within which the superficially unrelated, "elemental" factors Involved 1n the process we lump together as "photography" can be organized 1n a way which will set forth the structural relationships between those factors, and will thereby provide a framework which may systematically reveal relationships and components within various theoretical orientation, thus suggesting possibilities for academ1c/cr1t1cal/art.1st1c

"discovery" of "new" or "missing" elements or relationships, and

"rediscovery" of elements or relationships presently neglected.

While 1t may perhaps be Impossible to "Integrate" -- In the functional or conceptual sense -- competing theories which contradict each other (for example, dialectical materialism vs. Eastern theories of consciousness) or theories Irrelevant to each other (such as theories of classical form vs. the "zone system"), 1t may be possible to reach a more limited but equally useful goal: a structural paradigm which can (1) organize together the various theoretical

Interests 1n photography, (2) permit them equal recognition as valid 236

theoretical areas of concern, but (3) make evident the the fact that

any one theoretical concern 1s simply part of a larger and more

diverse whole; that competing theories, like the classic example of

wave vs. particle theory 1n the physics of light, need not and cannot

pretend to exclusive hegemony, truth, or power.

Specifically, this paradigm should stimulate new Interest 1n art

photography, curatorshlp, and photographic writing, 1n several ways:

F irst, by providing a legitim ating framework which can provide

space for, and therefore Implicit recognition for, any new

theoretical approach advanced by a rtis ts , curators, academicians, or c ritic s.

Second, by stimulating a search for new theoretical bases for

the previously unartlculated theoretical Intentions of artists, and for the diverse — and often conflicting — theoretical Interests and proposals of curators, academicians, and critics.

Third, by showing the students of photographic production, curating and criticism that the boundaries of political discourse,

(which may consider photography as no more than commodity fetish and decadent product of dying capitalist culture) are not the necessary boundaries of legitimate photographic practice, writing, theory, or thought.

It Is true that, even now, there exists a tremendous quantity of existing theoretical writing which may be considered applicable to various aspects of photography. However, with the exception of "how 237 to do 1t" practical theory, 1t 1s largely borrowed from, or at least based upon, other disciplines, such as physics, chemistry, and optics. The physical properties of optical lenses have received both empirical and theoretical attention since the Renaissance, and light- sensitive reagents have been studied Intensively since the eighteenth century. Theoretical and practical advances 1n photography-related technology are, of course, continuing at this time; sophisticated advances pile up, one upon another, 1n fast 11ght-sens1t1ve emulsions, automated still cameras, three-dimensional holography, computer-generated Imagery, and still-Image video cameras.

However, still photography -- unlike Its own step-child, the medium of cinema — enjoys no neatly rationally d and taxonomlzed body of theory centering upon Itself as a discrete entity, a unique medium. There 1s yet no realm of photographic Inquiry comparable to

"film theory" with Its received divisions: "realism," "auteurlsm,"

"structuralism ," "phenomenology," "dialectics," "semiology," "genre," etc.;ll nor to lite ra ry theory, which parallels the film theory taxonomy and adds such categories as "hermeneutics,"

"psychoanalysis," "reception theory," and "political criticism."

While the "theory of photography" uses all of these modes of film and literary theory, In no photographic or critical text will these modes be systematically set forth and Inter-related.^

Indeed, a recent International symposium at the Ryerson

Polytechnlcal In stitu te, Toronto, Canada, which proposed to address 238 the topic of photographic theory, yielded no consensus as to the

nature of "the theory of photography." In fact, the Im perialistic

contenslousness between the views vying for recognition as ultim ately

fundamental, plus the final complete stalemate without cessation of

argument, prompted the c ritic Michael Starenko to report the

symposium 1n Afterimage under the title "Discourse, Terminable and

Interminable."1*1

The facts according to Starenko: The symposium, at the Ryerson

Polytechnlcal Institute 1n September of 1983, was organized 1n

rc:ponse to a need, felt by the faculty, for development of a curriculum for teaching the theory of photography. This need, 1n

turn, apparently emerged from the pending separation of the film and photography department Into a department of media (film, video, and

1nter-med1a art) and a separate department of photography. Though

Starenko himself did not Imply such, 1t appears that the photography faculty, about to be elevated from the midst of the more theoretically developed fields of film and 1nter-med1a art, suddenly perceived themselves as new academic emperors caught without theoretical clothes.

According to Starenko, the four Symposium speakers represented various theoretical approaches: Victor Burgln, representing "French

Psychoanalysis," argued for the total hegemony of theory In education on the grounds that "there 1s no state of ...existence outside of language, therefore "all discourse 1s already theoretical." He 239 "charted a course through liberal and early Marxist theories of perception" and ended with the apparently political suggestion that new ways of "making the subject [socializing the Individual 1n society] must be found" else "no revolution will happen."

Academically, he demanded a new pedagogy outside both conservative and liberal traditions.

Hoi11s Frampton argued for the possib ility of a theory of photographic representation 1n which a rt and science are complementary approaches emanating from the two differing halves of the brain. In opposition, Allan Sekula argued that "art and science are opposed to each other" and that "this 1s the master model for all contradictions under capitalism."

Joel Snyder based his remarks on the notion that theory should follow from practice. He then argued for a philosophically Idealist theory of photography as being more "real" that the world 1t represents: since reality 1s ultim ately 1n the mind, this mental re a lity 1s representational. There 1s, therefore, no reality beyond representation; the photograph-as-1ndex 1s mere Illusion.

Starenko wondered, rhetorically and skeptically, whether the

Ryerson faculty f e lt this disorganized discussion of competing rubrics of theory external to photography Itself provided the desired practical "curriculum for teaching the theory of photography."

Starenko reported that only a minority of the photographic faculty attended the event; this fact 1s consistent with Starenko's own 240 perception of all such symposia being one of endless discourse and

Inherent Impossibility of consensus or agreement. He quoted from

Regis Debray's Teacher's, Writers, Celebrities: The In te lle c tu a ls of

Modern France to the effect that, to each Intellectual, the written vision and plastic Idea of theworld Is different and, 1f there 1s 1n truth only one real world, 1t must be "*asIt appears to me.'"

Therefore, there can be no true Intellectual agreement or community because, to each Intellectual, agreement or community are only a means to the realization of his own Individualism and his own concept of reality.

This view of Debray's seems related to the dictum of the metacrltlcal theorist Suresh Raval, that Intellectual criticism 1s an endless stream of rhetorical contests between personal, "permanently disputed concepts" not subject to empirical test.^

On the one hand, we might take the hopeful view that this

"Interminable discourse" (Starenko) or these "permanently" disputed concepts" (Raval) are not only Inevitable, but are the necessary seedbeds from which spring advancements 1n human understanding. On the other hand, 1t 1s also true ~ and this 1s the reason Starenko's a rtic le Is quoted here at such length — that these contests can (as demonstrated by the Ryerson panel) at least temporarily paralyze that progress. Therefore, a more general theoretical structure, which could accommodate and recognize competing theories, might be of great service to the advancement of theory 1f such a structure could, by 241

Its accommodation and recognition of competing theories, clarify and ameliorate the conflict which leads to "Interminable discourse" with

Its paralysis of theoretical progress.

The Ryerson Symposium was a contemporary expression of a perceived need for a more general photographic theory. More diverse concern with specific needs for expanded photographic theory have been voiced by such w riters as Richard K lrstel, Estelle Jusslm, A. D.

Coleman, and Richard Bolton.

In 1969, Richard Klrstel wrote an essay (recently republished) entitled "Photography and Sculpture." Klrstel said:

All knowledge, all creative effo rt, walks on the shoulders of those who have gone before. So the emerging aesthetics of photography have been phrased 1n the language of older a rt forms...establ1shed during the long history of Western art. Unfortunately this language has been made up very largely of the vocabulary of the painter. It 1s long past time that...the direction and structure of photography... be re-or1ented. (emphasis added) L15J

In 1976, the photography critic A. D. Coleman attacked the re a list canon of Beaumont Newhall — an authority then widely recognized as our leading photohistorian — that required photography to proceed only by selection of the photographed object, not by Its construction or direction. Coleman observed:

Though you wouldn't know 1t from studying any of the available histories of the medium, the directorial mode of photography has a long, diverse, and honorable tradition, (emphasis added) [16]

Coleman lets us know here — 1n order to legitimate his endorsement of the theoretical/surrealist work of Arthur Tress — 242 that photographic practice had, even at that time, completely outstripped the progress of Its theoretical analysis.

Another, and more recent, commentary on the paucity of photographic theory was made, 1n 1984, by the critic and historian

Estelle Jusslm, who teaches the history of photography, film, graphic arts, and communication theory at Simmons College. From her

Interdisciplinary vantage point, she was struck by the fact that:

It 1s curious that the literature of photography contains far more about the chronological history of "documentary" than about how documentary photography succeeds 1n persuading, how the photographs manage to Influence public opinion.... outside the labyrinths of semiotics, we find, few writers who pursue the process by which photographs persuade, if Indeed they do.... It 1s the study of the audience and the context of the response that has been most neglected, (emphasis added) [l?J

What do the above quotations tell us about the state of contemporary photographic theory? At least, they suggest the following:

(1) There 1s a frequently perceived need, 1n the field of photography, to expand theory to a point commensurate with practice and useful to teaching and to criticism. This need was the specific reason-for-be1ng of the Ryerson Institute.

(2) Arguably, one of the causes of this need may be the absence

— presently hidden behind "Interminable discourse" — of a comprehensive, legitimating structure for the theory of photography, a structure which could encompass the mundane operations of the medium Itself as well as the concerns of grand theories of politics, 243 linguistics, culture, communications, etc.. All areas of theory, even those which are logically Irreconcilable or mutually Irrelevant

to each other, could be recognized and encouraged beneath such a

structural umbrella.

(3) As suggested by Joel Snyder a t the Symposium at Ryerson

Polytech, the path to the building of Just such a comprehensive

theoretical structure for photography may He 1n a deliberate

redirection of theoretical concern toward the medium Itself. Theory,

1n other words, may proceed from practice.

The theoretical concerns of Klrstel, Coleman, and Jusslm have all addressed single, specific, but separate areas of photographic theory. A more general theoretical area, the eplstemology and phenomenology of photographic representation, 1s considered by

Richard Bolton In the current (Fall, 1985) Issue of Exposure. Bolton provides a lengthy and complex critique of John Berger's attempts at constructing a representational theory of photography 1n Ways of

Seeing and Another Way of Telling. Bolton concludes that Berger's theory Is false 1n many aspects, self contradictory 1n others, and 1n to to , vague as well as confused.

However, Bolton does declare the possib ility that Berger's

"theory of appearance" may be, In some sense, correct. Berger's 1s a theory suggesting, In essence, that visual appearances can and do, In photography and In other visual situations, Impart visual Information and knowledge which need no explication 1n writing. Says Bolton: What If Berger, after all this, 1s actually right about the nature of photography? It may be that photography Is so based upon modern European theories of knowledge and science that any theory of photography may be so wedded to the concept of representation formed by Western science and technology that to reject Its eplstemology must be to reject photography as well. If this Is the case, then Berger's theory Is actually the last line of defense for the medium — perhaps the last theory possible for photography. If this Is not the case, then we are obliged to begin constructing an alternative -- and, with good fortune, a myriad of alternatives' (emphasis added) [18J

Developing a New Paradigm of Photographic Theory

The results of the, Ryerson Symposium of the Theory of

Photography, and the above quotations from Klrstel, Coleman, Jusslm, and Bolton, suggest three possible starting points from which the presently formless mass of "photographic theory" can be usefully systematized:

(1) Initially, a recognition that current theoretical concerns with larger conceptual rubrics (politics, economics, mass communications, etc.,) are not based primarily 1n photography Itself and may legitimately be relegated to a separate, secondaryposition

1n photographic theory. Put another way, 1t may be possible to recognize that theories of politics, linguistics, or criticism are not necessarily the theory of the photographic medium Itself. Put still another way, It may be possible to develop, from photographic practice, an organization and emphasis specific to the medium Itself to "re-center" criticism 1n the medium. 245

(2) A new, systematic approach to photographic theory may

Involve consideration of a multitude of concerns such as those

expressed by Klrstel, Coleman, Jusslm, and Bolton; all of whom share

a concern with Nrea1N photography, a concern with contemporary

culture and the ways photography 1s embedded 1n those cultural

understandings, needs,and activities which constitute the Institution

called "photography."

(3) To Investigate and systematize all these theoretical

concerns requires a methodology. Such a methodology, 1n turn,

requires some sort of paradigmatic structure upon which, or within

which, these concerns can be usefully and comprehensively organized.

Such a structure — like the concerns with which 1t deals — might appropriately be based on the actual operations of contemporary

photography as an a r tis tic , social, and communicative activ ity .

One way to do this would be to construct a fleld-theory diagram of the kind used by communication theorists 1n attempting to

structurally Integrate the separate theories of the communications

process.On such a diagram we might place basic components of

photographic operations — the "actors," human and Institutional --

who are Involved 1n the photographic process at Its most basic level.

For the content of such a diagram, we might find Inspiration 1n the

Structuralist Htereture-as-commun1cat1on theory of Roman Jakobson.

"For Jakobson, all communication Involves six elements: an

addresser, an addressee, a message passed between them, a shared code 246

which makes that message In tellig ib le, a contact or physical medium

of communication, and a 'context' to which the message refers. Any

one of these elements may dominate 1n a particular communicative

a c t.. ." 20

Therefore, the "theory of literature" may be organized around

the Influences acting upon, or preceding from, any of these elements or any of the relationships between them. For Instance, language may be seen as an "expression" of the addresser, as a potentially

"conative" or manipulated force upon the addressee, as a referential act pertaining to something outside Itself, as a metalinguistic tool for analyzing Its own operations. From such a system, poetry 1s language 1n which the Internal relationships between the words takes precedence over other functions and other relationships between components: "The poetic function projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection to the axis of combination."21

Applying this logic to the medium of still photography, we may locate certain equivalences between Jakobson's elements of literature and those of still photography. "Addresser" becomes photographer, "addressee" becomes viewer, "message" (text) becomes photograph or artefact, "medium" becomes technical photographic processes, and "context" becomes subject, that-wh1ch-1s-photographed.

More difficulty 1s encountered when "code" 1s subjected to an attempt to force 1t Into this system of equivalences. Unlike the other elements of the photographic system just suggested, "code" 1s 247 an objective, physical entity 1n only a partial, limited sense: 1f a written text Is composed of alternative, other texts and of endless subtexts, each with their own codes, (Barthes/Derrida) then "code" 1s a substantially Indeterminate Idea, let alone a "thing."

It may therefore appear deslreable to leave out "code" as an element of a photographic system, assigning 1t to a place on the axis of the various other relationships: for Instance, the relationship between photograph and viewer, where the codes of signification expressed 1n the photographer's Intention and the viewer's

Interpretation may be examined. In this sense, the code becomes a process, not a physical component.

Leaving out the code, 1t may be tempting to substitute, as another physical element of the system, the distribution network which physically transports the photograph to the viewer: the museums, book publisher, stock agency, etc.

This done, our definition of the elements of the photographic system — a system conceptualized not only as a medium of communication, but as a system of production, distribution, and consumption-- might be outlined as follows:

First, we may usefully divide photographic theory Into two levels: "micro" and "macro."

Microtheory will of course be the theory of Inner process; 1t will deal with the human actors, technical and artistic processes, and Institutional processes directly Involved 1n producing, 248 distributing, and viewing a photographic Image. Microtheory will

Include the relationships between the photographer (artist, Image- maker, message-sender, documentarlan, etc.); the physical processes of the medium (camera-work, development, printing, copying, etc.); the subject (sitter, model, subject, etc,); the Image (photograph, print, artifact, text, art-object, etc.); the distribution system

(publisher, museum, gallery, photo editor, agent, etc.); and the audience (viewer, collector, critic, historian, etc.). In special situations, this 11st of physical participants in the Institutional processes we call "photography" could of course be expanded, at will, to suit any theoretical, practical, or analytical purpose.

A two-dimensional diagram of this theoretical structure,

Including Its various components and possible re la tio n sh ip s between them, follows on the next page. 249 Microprocess Diagram

A two-dimensional diagram providing a visual and conceptual structure for the multitude of possible relationships between the components of the photographic microprocess might look like this: 250

Next, macrotheory; the theory of outside Influence or secondary

Interface. Macrotheory will deal with the Impacts on the

microprocess of larger, external, environmental factors: economics,

politics, culture, language, technology, and the mass media. These

Influences are generic rather than specific; their Influence on the

microprocess Is Indirect rather than Intrusive.

The various external factors Impinging upon the microprocess

must, of course, appear and be Integrated Into a theoretical model,

even though they may not be the model's primary concern.

How to do this? The macroprocess factors listed above can each

be spatially Integrated with the microprocess model by simply

considering each "macro" factor to form the background against which

(or the environment within which) the microprocess operates. For

Instance, the relationship of any two factors, such as photograph and

viewer, can be considered within the context of politics, economics,

etc.. An almost Infinite variety of possible permutations, each of

potential Interest to photographic history, criticism, and scholarly

research, could be generated by going beyond the visual model and

u tilizing computer programming.

As noted elsewhere In this paper, there are, at this time, many

Influential critics who see criticism as literary application of

systematic models of political, linguistic, cultural, technological, economic, or communications theory as — or better, "for" — 251 photographic criticism . The application of such models to photo- c rltld s m often results In criticism which Is, In effect, anti- photographic.

However, In proposing to counteract this anti-photographic tendency, this study does not propose the development of a new theory of photography, or a new system of critical method. Rather, It opposes the present tendency toward restriction of photocr1t1c1sm to political and linguistic concerns based outside the medium Itself.

What this study does propose Is, In concept, a sort of neo-Modern1st notion: the development of a new, systematic structure for the theory of photography which can help to return photocriticism to a concern with Itself as medium. It can provide a systematic grasp of the medium Itself as a basis for stimulating further critical writing and theoretical research centered on the medium's own multiplicity of forms, contents, purposes, and Institutional settings.

There 1s already a nearly universal, "systematic" model of generic "practical" photocr1t1c1sm which 1s also encountered 1n the visual a rts, lite ra tu re , music, drama, etc.. It Is a common-sense model of obvious procedural steps: description, analysis,

Interpretation, evaluation. Because Its very simplicity and ambiguity makes this model appropriate for a critique of any medium, this model Is — despite Its almost absurd vacuousness — as close to a universal model of criticism j>er se as we may realistically hope for.*2 However, the appropriateness of this generlcally vague, 252 procedurally minimal, and conceptually empty model 1s questionable, when applied to the medium of still photography. Actually, In order

to be useful at all, criticism of the descrlptlon-analysls-

1nterpretat1on-evaluat1on method must assume the existence of other, more conceptually specific paradigms of analysis. To provide such a concept-specific paradigm Is the project of this writing.

The Uses of Criticism

In my own considered view — which 1s to say 1n the Modernist tradition — the function of criticism may be defined as

Interpretation; as the production, by the critic, of useful commentary on a particular phenomenon: an educational or political process, a literary or visual or dramatic work, an entire artistic or communicative medium, a system of philosophical thought, and so forth. Whatever the subject, 1t 1s the function of the c ritic to

"say something," to provide useful frames of reference for socially ambiguous events or objects of art.

The method of criticism 1s based upon the concept of cr1t1c1sm- as-op1n1on, a concept Informed by the Modernist ethic of

Individualism. The critic himself originates, and assumes responsibility for, the content of the critique; he does not require legal precedent, the force of law or of unquestioned physical fact, or the processes of scientific research to validate his critical dicta. The critic applies what 1s, 1n essence, a melding of 253 philosophical Inquiry (speculation and logical analysis) with an

Individualistic, creative, perhaps actually "artistic" opinion. KIs critique employs concepts which the c ritic himself brings to bear without the need for external verification or appeal to other authority; the critic's opinion Is socially privileged with Inherent authority of Its own.

This view of criticism reflects certain views of Beardsley,

Danto, and Raval.

Monroe Beardsley characterizes the critic's function as the distribution of social acceptance or rejection to art 1n order that society may deal with a rt. Beardsley, 1n Aesthetics: Problems 1n the

Philosophy of Criticism (1958), describes this rather traditional, honorific view of the critical function with the metaphor of

"awarding a medal," a socially necessary function which socially establishes, recognizes, and rewards an action without changing 1t physically, scientifically, or legally. Its "factual1ty" 1s not

changed, only Its meaning and Its honor. ^

This view seems related to Arthur C. Danto's "Institutional" theory of art; a theory 1n which a rt Is, 1n effect, "created" In Its treatment as such by artists, curators, collectors, critics, and the public.** Danto's theory Is, In turn, based on the Insights of

Marcel Duchamp and his stimulation of an avant-garde movement which recognized that anything created, or anything encountered, may

"become" art 1f placed In the proper contexts of physical display and 254 aesthetic attribution. In this view, art 1s, 1n effect, whatever we treat as art.

The eplstemologlcal rationale for the "creation" of art by c ritic a l recognition of the object as such 1s provided by Suresh

Raval In Metacriticism (1981). Raval provides a definition of criticism as the application of "essentially contested concepts," concepts which may Include grand theories of philosophy or politics as well as various concepts of the nature of criticism Itself. The application of these permanently, essentially contested concepts leads to metacrltlcal disputes about which of these concepts "are" criticism. It also leads to controversy regarding what the application of these concepts actually produces 1n Items of understanding. These disputes are, In theory, endless because actually resolving disputes about the conceptual nature and findings of a certain piece of criticism would transfer the criticism Itself

Into some other realm of discourse. Opinion would be transformed

Into "fact;" 1t would become science, or law, or history; 1t would no longer be criticism.^

In my judgement, the keys to a deeper understanding of criticism

He In such questions as these: Where do Beardsley's "critical

Interpretations" and Raval's "permanently contested concepts" come from? What are the sources of "critical Insight?" What are the conceptual sources of critical analysis, Interpretation, and 255 evaluation? As a practical matter, how do we locate these sources?

Can we construct a model which may help?

To some extent, these sources may be found 1n personal experience, common sense, and the established perceptive and cognitive and emotional structures of socially defined "reality" 1n the critic's own culture. In "popular" criticism, this 1s enough.

However, academic/intellectual criticism must, by the nature of

Its own accepted pretenses and established methodologies, go conceptually much deeper. So must criticism performed 1n the arenas of the museum culture and the avant-garde. In these arenas, the advancement of theoretical or aesthetic understanding, or actual knowledge, 1s assumed as a c ritical objective and a critic a l product; very sophisticated critical Insights are expected. These may be the product of Individual, Interpretive creativity; alternately, they may emerge 1n the form of specific applications of "essentially contested concepts."

Such concepts are not necessarily the derivatives of more general levels of analysis (politics, linguistics, etc.). Such concepts may also emerge from theories of the Idiosyncratic, Internal workings of the the various media themselves. A certain theory of artistic method In a particular medium, or even a rore generic theory of the nature of art Itself, may, 1n the using, serve just as well as a theory of criticism as of production. For Instance, a theory of photography as "trace of nature" may be expressed 1n the 256

theory-of-pract1ce concepts of "Zone System" exposure and printing.2^

This "Zone" theory, 1n turn, may be used as a practical guide for an artistic effort to precisely reproduce, by technical means, as much as possible of the tonal scale and visible detail of the photographic subject. Then, as a theory of critique as well as of technique, the zone system may function equally well 1n describing, analyzing.

Interpreting, and evaluating the photograph as "natural trace" or as

"Zone System Image."

Theories of explanation, Intention, technique, and so forth, from any of the sources from which such theories emerge, can be used as a context for, and thereby Integrated Into, the visual model of the structure of photographic theory developed earlier 1n this paper

As a systematic model of criticism, this model will serve to structure an outline of conceptual possibilities for otherwise conceptually empty In itial processes.

Use of the Structure! Paradigm to Adopt the Theory of

Other Disciplines to the Theory of Photography

What follows 1s an Illu stratio n of how this model can be used to spatially Integrate, In the form of a simple visual mathematics, other approaches useful to photographic critics, artists, historians, and curators 1n analyzing the photographic process. To carry out this process of Illustration, we might turn to photography's sister- medium, film. 257 There are a number of accepted, elaborated, well-used approaches to the criticism of film. These are based, 1n turn, on various theories of "the nature of film." These theories may easily be used as theories of still photography 1n that they can be located spatially on the basic photographic microprocess diagram. This diagram represents the Internal workings and "actors," human and

Institutional, 1n the activity of taking, physically creating, distributing, and viewing a photograph — a process structurally similar to the process of fllmaklng, viewing, and distributors.

An outline of various critical, film-theory approaches to an analysis of photography would start with an eclectic collection of

"film theories," these to be used as an outline of concepts useful In film criticism. (These concepts are, 1n the following diagrams, taken one step farther by translation Into a paradigm of still- photographic theory. The appropriated concepts of film theory

Include: aesthetics, realism, expressionism, auteurlsm, phenomenology, structuralism , semiotics, p o litics, d ialectics, genre, commercialism, and film technology.2?

These are briefly defined, related to the photographic theory, and then located spatially, on the diagrams that follow. The heavy lines Indicate relationships that are primary In this theoretical approach; the arrowheads Indicate the r-1mary direction of Influence or causality. The circles Indicating actors or elements have been heavily outlined only If they are the central concern of the theory. 258 (Thus* 1n the f i r s t example. "Phenomenology.” the primary emphasis 1s upon the psychological processes creating a "new reality” In the viewer's mind, and upon the processes by which the Image provides a stimulus to this psychological process.)

Following are the diagrams of film theory, as Integrated Into a systematic model of photographic criticism. 259

audience (viewer)

tech- N n ica l / d iet rib process ♦ ( utor

a r tifa c t

Expressionism: This 1s the traditional Romantic and Modernist theory of a rtis tic creativity. Here, the photographer, the Image, the statement of that Image and that photographer are all privileged as Individual, unique, and valuable. The Image Is considered a "mirror" of the photographer's unique vision, experience, or Insight. While other actors and other relationships on this diagram are usually Involved, they are analyzed only 1n the context of the Image as product or expression of the photographic artist's Interior reality. 260

tech - n ica l / diet rib-' process ♦ ( utor

'image a r tifa c t

Auteurlsm: Derived from film criticism, this 1s a theory of film which considers one person the “author" of a work of art. However, the characteristics of the "auteur" are not dealt with 1n this theoretical approach; only the characteristics of the auteur's body of work, as a unit, are analyzed. Thus, while 1t emphasizes the Identity of the artist and considers his work unique, 1t treats of nothing within the artist himself, and Is thus the opposite of expressionism. (Truffaut, Sarrls, Wollen.) I t 1s also the complete negation of Intention as critical criterion. 261

subject \ (object) )< audience (▼lever)

tech- N n lcal ( dietrib-' process ♦ [ utor

Image a r tifa c t

Genre: In film theory, the grouping of films Into generic units distinguished from each other by consistencies of style, visual and narrative theme and motif, time and place and circumstance of setting, philosophical world-view, ritual re-enactment of plot, and so forth. Genre 1n film include the Western, the fllm-nolr, the musical, etc. Genre 1n still photography might Include photo­ journalism, documentary, advertising, portraiture, etc. Leaving out the relationship between technical process and Image, photographic genre might also include the traditional "Great Themes" of subject matter: war, peace, childhood, the family, woman, the nude, etc. 262

photog­ rapher

audiance . (viewer).

tech- n ica l j d ietrib J process ♦I utor

ri»ag« a r tifa c t

Psychological Realism: The process of creation of a "new reality" 1n the mind of the viewer, a reality not primarily related to the characteristics of the object of representation. This "new reality" depends on the mind's own mechanisms of perception and cognition and belief. (Bazin, Munsterberg, etc.) 263

photog­ rapher

audience (viewer).

tech ­ n ica l J diatrib^ procea -*■[ utor

a r tifa c t

Phenomenology: Based on the principles of perception, this theoretical approach emphasizes the effects of the technical process on the nature of the Image, and the ways In which these technical effects produce Illusion. This approach emphasizes technology and physiology; In comparison, “Psychological Realism" tends to emphasize credibility and the suspension of disbelief. 264

photog­ rapher

# t e c h - I n ica l I procasi

a r tifa c t

Objective Realism: ' Primarily, the process of producing a photographic Image with ^accurate" correspondence to the object of representation, and the process of reproducing that correspondence 1n the mind of the viewer. Other actors and relationships may be Involved, but are secondary and subordinate to this "objective" process. (Kracauer.) 265

tech- ^ n ica l / d lstrib ^ process. ♦I utor

a r tifa c t

Dialectics and Structuralism; F1lm-theoret1cal approaches which analyze the ways In which the technical combinations of the elements of film (shots, scenes, sound, visuals, dialogue, etc.) produce different effects on the viewer. In photography, parallel Interests emerge In the work of John Berger (Another Way of Telling) on the contexts of the Image. It may be said that the process of sequencing In still photography Is the same as the process of editing 1n film, or that the relationship of dialogue to the rest of the film 1s the same as the relationship of captioning or commentary to the photograph. 266

^ I audience V (viewer)

diatrlb-' utor

a r tifa c t

Technologies: The relationships between the technical processes (Involved In photographic equipment, optics, chemistry, physics) and the characteristics of the photographic image and artifact. Other actors and relationships may be Involved, but are secondary and subordinate. 267

audience (viewer)

tech- ' n ica l d ietrib process utor

' laage i l( artifact);

Commercialism: Ir* film, this 1s the "box office" theory of film production and criticism; evaluation 1s In terms of "what will sell." In photography, this translates Into market-oriented decisions by the museum curator as to what exhibitions will be well received, decisions by editors as to what photojournalism to print, decisions by publishers as to what photography to publish, decisions by stock houses as to what photographs to accept, etc. 268

audience (viewer)

tech - N n ic a l d iatrib e process utor

a r tifa c t

Aesthetics: The nature of the formal sensibilities of the photographer, the Impact of those sensibilities upon the formal characteristics of the Image, and the affect of those formal characteristics of the Image upon the form sensibilities of the viewer. Other actors and relationships may be Involved, but are secondary and subordinate. 269

*ubj«ct (object) ]<■ ^1 audience I (riewer)

te c h - ~ n ical j d iatrib e process ♦I utor

f iTrrrr ' i( artifact);

Master Craftsman: This theoretical approach 1s the one most commonly encountered 1n real criticism, though 1t receives little notice 1n formal film theory. This approach credits master craftsmen, or major artists, with a determining Influence on the filmic artifact. Usually, this Influence Is attributed to the director as "auteur," but this 1s not always true; producers, cameramen, screenwriters, editors, etc. are often accorded the most Influence. Also unlike "auteur" theory, this Influence 1s often highly personal; Its analysis may Involve a focus upon biography. Similarly, 1t may differ from "auteur" theory 1n other ways, for Instance, 1n a concentration upon the Impact of the great man upon actors other than the film Itself. In still photography, the "great man" Is often referred to as the "Master Photographer." Such a person personally has great Impact on the en tire process. 270

Use of the Structural Paradigm to Develop New Photographic Curricula

Existing photographic curricula are usually, to some extent, based on theory, but this theory 1s particularized and limited. In most cases, It 1s essentially technical, practical, aesthetic, or p o litical.

Technical theory Involves camera operation, printing techniques, development skills, "Zone System" exposure, and theoretical knowledge of the optical principles of lenses. Aesthetic theory Is largely confined to the Kantian, Modernist assumptions of the necessity for all photography to be expressive, Individualistic, and unique 1f 1t

1s to be considered art. These assumptions are reflected 1n art photography's basic traditions: the Individual portfolio, the significant single Image, and the ritual exhibition or "show" of unique work by a single Individual.

Politically, current Marxist and Feminist theories of the photograph as commodity fetish, of the Image as Inherently aggressive and victimizing, and of the Institution of photography as exploitative of women are major theoretical orientations now dominant 1n academic/intellectual criticism of photography, as 1n such criticism of other media, particularly film. Linguistics, too, has u current c ritical Impact: the photograph as "text" and the viewer as "reader" are notions serving almost as professional shlbbothes for the writer. 271 While these theoretical bases of curricula undoubtedly useful and Important, I would suggest that useful expansion of photographic education, as well as of the theory which precedes It and the practice which follows It, could result from careful study and

Inspired use of the micro-macro visual model dealt with above. Based on multivariate analysis of the relationships between the model's components, this model could even be used, with a computer, to electronically generate "shopping lists" of directions for new course content; used to stimulate new writing and research. Such new teaching, criticism, history, and technical possibilities will, 1t Is hoped, serve to recenter the attention of critical, academic, and artistic photography on the medium Itself, and upon Its stl11- unreallzed possibilities, thus contributing to a new growth of these activities, and a concurrent recognition that ant1-photograph1c criticism 1s an unnecessary — and Indeed, self-destructive —

Indulgence on which the medium need not depend for Its exposure.

For example, le t us examine the teaching p o ssib ilities emerging from, for Instance, a consideration of A. D. Coleman's demand for critical and hlstorlal recognition of "directorial" photography.

As A. D. Coleman has pointed out, "directorial" photography has traditionally been denied recognition as authentic art photography by conservative historians (such as Beaumont Newhall).2® This denial, of course, finds support in the original objective/documentary/ copywork/record tradition 1n which photography was Invented, as well 272 as the later, more specific, applied traditions of photo-journal Ism, political/social documentary, and scientific photography. In a negative way, this proscription has been reinforced by the fact that,

1n photography, the money-making (and, therefore, academically and artistically disreputable) fields of advertising, fashion, portraiture, and wedding photography are all directorial to the core.

Film, another photographic medium, Is of course the most commercialized, money-making, and directorial of all. These forms of photography are therefore anathema to the photographic sen sib ilities of elitist art photographers, critics, and historians.

However, 1t may be relevant to ask how far film would have progressed as a medium had 1t been restricted to the non directorial; had Its product been confined to the singular filmic "realisms" of solitary cinematographers, wandering the world alone, 1n search of

"reality" to select, excise, Interpret, and present -- without any unification of filmed Images Into narrative or didactic entitles deserving the t i t l e of "cinema." Such Idiosyncratic efforts would require no external direction or Influence upon the work of the cameraman, or upon the subject matter recorded on his film.

Film education would then be extremely simple, 1t would require only the Instruction “Go out and shoot something."

In my judgement, this 1s a vision which presents Its e lf as absurdist In the extreme. Might It not, therefore, be equally absurd 273 for still photographic education to concentrate on naive selection, on random record-making?

Yet that 1s what precisely happens, In my experience at least,

1n the basic orientation (toward equ.f ment/irater1als/techn1que) of conventional photographic education, at least 1n the "art" (non­ commercial) courses. In my experience as a photography teacher, the world does, In fact, seem at times to be covered with photography students who, like the Imaginary cinematographers referred to above, actually are wandering the world, wondering — and begging of all their teachers, classmates, and friends — "What shall I photograph?"

The endless p o ssib ilities, most of which H e beyond mere selection, have never occurred to them. As far as they know, pictures are

"taken, not made."

Looking at the structured paradigm of micro-photographic processes that I propose, we can locate the specific problem here as within the relationship between two to the major variables, the photographer and the subject (matter) photographed. (By such location, the notion of "directorial photography" 1s automatically legitimated. Then, by appealing to theories of film direction and experimental f1lm-mak1ng as well as to photographic tradition, we can develop a 11st of creative possibilities or variations within this relationship. From my Master's Thesis — written at a time when I was already concerned about the problem — here 1s a possible shopping list: a 11st of differing modes of photographic practice 1n 274 which the creative, theoretical possibilities range from the passive

(selective), through the Intrusive (participative) to the active

(directorial), and beyond to the creation of entirely new Images reflecting new realities.29

(!) Selection: Photographing pre-existing objects, or on-go1ng events, with no Impact, Intrusion, or Influence whatever upon the object or event. The Andy Warhol film Empire State Building and the traditional genre of landscape-survey photography are examples of this purely selective approach.

(2) Surreptitious observation: Ongoing events, and the persons

Involved 1n them, may sometimes be photographed without subject awareness. Such a process Is completely non-1ntrus1ve, but only partially selective; the original event or person 1s selected before the photography takes place, but the progress of the event or activity of the person 1s not selected and notknown beforehand.

Surreptitious observation can be achieved by using hidden cameras. Examples of this photographic mode would be the hldden- camera documentary A Propos de Nice by Jean V1go and Dennis Kaufman, or the still photography of sleeping, unconscious, or completely distracted subjects by Weegee.

(3) Documentation: Events which are not stimulated by the photographer, but are openly photographed with the subject's knowledge, are followed as they occur and are recorded on film. The 27j presence of the artist and camera may constitute an Indirect

Intervention and minor Influence upon the event. However, this

Influence Is, on the one hand, minimized as much as possible and, on the other hand, accepted to whatever extent It occurs. Work 1n this mode or style Includes films such as the Drew/Leacock documentary

Primary, the dedslve-moment photography of Andre Kertesz, and the spontaneous documentary of Gary Wlnogrand. This 1s the approach which forms the basis of that film and s t ill photography which 1s called journalistic, documentary, or, 1n the original sense, "snap­ shot."

(4) Stimulation: Events are set 1n motion by the photographer (but completely without the photographer's control, or prior knowledge of what 1s going to occur) and then recorded on still or movie film.

Essentially, this a process of recording "happenings;" It Is the process used 1n the "C1nema-Ver1te" films of Jean Rouch/Edgar Morin and the group-1nteract1on photographs of Joe Gantz.

(5) Direction: Existing reality 1s still used as the basis of the

Image but the reality 1s directed, controlled, and altered. In film this Includes those activities called direction, m1se-en-scene, editing, and verisimilitude; 1n photography some of the terms used are staging, posing, setting-up, composition, editing, and sequencing. Extreme examples of this approach are the film s of

C. B. De M1lle and Orson Welles, the fashion photography of Cecil 276 Beaton, and the photographic fantasies of Henry Peach Robinson or

Arthur Tress.

(6) New Reality; The completely formative artist In film or photography may create or construct totally new Images, entirely from the mind. In film this can be done by animation; In photography by cllche-verre, or by photograms created by hand-drawing Images with chemicals on photosensitive paper. Melles attempted to use film to create almost pure fantasy; 1n contemporary film and photography purely mental Images can be created by computer generations like those of Chuck Csurl, while almost-purely mental Images are found 1n

Surreal1st/Dada films like Un Chlen Andalou by Picasso and Bunuel, or the contemporary still-photographic grotesquerles of Joel-Peter

Wltkln.

In sum, the artist 1n film or photography may be very active: he may create new realities with entirely artificial Imaging techniques, or he may direct or control subject matter and may actually Intervene 1n the recorded event. On the other hand, the artist may be completely passive; he may simply accept the concept of art as a "found object" and may restrict his creativity to selection and recording of the world as 1t Is.

The various permutations of this creativity/passivity parameter

-- which all take place on the photographer-subject axis of my microprocess diagram — would, It seems to me, make a fascinating course 1n both photographic production or photographic theory; 277 perhaps even a course 1n both combined. In such a course, few students would have to wonder what to photograph.

Such a course Is one of the myriad possibilities arising from investigation of the many conceivable relationships existing on only one of the axes of the theoretical diagram. The model's significant potential for expanding both theory and practice 1n the teaching of still photography 1s, I believe, suggested by this single example.

Another Interesting possibility would be the teaching of a course on photographic metacrlt1c1sm, based on the pro/ant1 photographic classification of critics presented 1n the general examination material. A close examination of the critical positions, biases, and assumptions of leading critics would be quite valuable, and would constitute something not yet systematically done.

Thus far, the possibilities for valuable new photographic curricula have hardly been dreamt of, let alone realized, by schools of photography. It 1s hoped this structural paradigm for photographic theory may provide a stimulus toward positive change 1n this situation. FOOTNOTES: CHAPTER VIII

(1) Barney L. Glaser and Anselm L. Strauss, The Rediscovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research, (Chicago, Aldlne Pub. Co., 1967).

(2) Robert Brown, Explanation 1n Soda! Science, (Chicago, Aldlne Pub. Co., 1965), ch. XI.

(3) Brian Coe, The Birth of Photography: The story of the formative years,~1860-1^06, (London. Ash & Grant. 1976). pp. 106-107.

(4) Ansel Adams, The Negative, (book 2 of the New Ansel Adams photography series.) (New York, New York Graphic Society/ L ittle, Brown, 1981). Other books 1n this series relating to the Zone System are The Camera and The Print.

(5) Jonathan Green, American Photography: A Critical History, 1945 to the Present, (New York, Harry N. Abrams. 19^4). chs. 6. 7, 8.

(6) Paul H111 & Thomas Cooper, eds., Dialogue with Photography, (New York, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1979), pp. 253-282. See also

Nathan Lyons, ed., Photographers on Photography, (Englewood C liffs, N.J., Prentlce-Hall, 1966), pp. 103-106. See also:

Ben Maddow, "History: The Passion of St. Eugene," American Photographer, December, 1985, pp. 43-63.

(7) Allan Sekula, Photography Against the Grain, (Halifax, Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1984). A retrospective compendium of major essays (some substantially revised) and exhibitions.

(8) Rosalind Krauss, "Poststructuralism and the ParalIterary," October 13, (Summer, 1980).

(9) Douglas Crimp, "The Photographic Activity of Postmodernism," October 15, (Winter, 1980).

(10) Peter Galassl, Before Photography: Painting and the Invention of Photography, (New York Museum of Modern Art, d1st. New York Graphic Society, Boston, 1981), pp. 11-32. See also: 279

Brian Coe, The Birth of Photography: The story of the formative years. IftM-iSOfl, {London, Ash & Grant, 1976). chs. 1 through 5.

(11) Roy Armes, Film andReality: An Historical Survey, (Baltimore, Penguin, i$74). See also:

J. Dudley Andrew, The Major Film Theories: An Introduction, (New York, Oxford Univ. Press, 1976). See also:

Louis R. G1annett1, Understanding Movies, 2nd ed., (Englewood CU ffs, N.J., Prentlce-Hall, 1976), ch. 10, "Theory." See also:

Gerald Hast and Marshall Coher., eds., Film Theory and C riticism , 2nd ed., (New York, Oxford Univ. Press, 19/9).

(12) E.g., see: Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory:An Introduction, (Minneapolis, Univ. of Minn. Press, 1983).

(13) Michael Starenko, "Discourse" Terminable and Interminable: Ryerson's Symposium on Photographic Theory," Afterimage, December, 1983, pp. 3 & 20.

(14) Suresh Raval, Metacr1t1c1sm, (Athens, Univ. of Georgia Press, 1981), passim.

(15) Richard K lrstel, "Sculpture 1n Photography," Camera 35, Aprll- May 1969, pp. 46-49, 68-69. (Reprinted In Journal of American Photography, III, 1, March, 1985.)

(16) A. D. Coleman, "Introduction" to Arthur Tress, Theater of the Mind, (Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., 1976). Introduction not paginated.

(17) Estelle Justlm, "Propaganda and Persuasion," 1n David Featherstone, ed., Observations: Essays on Documentary Photography, (Carmel, Calif., Friends of Photography, 1984),

(18) Richard Bolton, "Wishful Thinking: John Berger's Theory of Photography," Exposure 23.3, (Fall, 1985), p. 34.

(19) Melvin L. De Fleur and Sandra Bal1-Rokeach, Theories of Mass Communication, 3rd ed., (New York, David tfckay, 1^75), ch.

(20) Eagleton, Theory, (footnote 12), supra, p. 98. 280

(21) Ibid., pp. 98-99.

(22) Brooke, James T„ A Viewer's Guide to Looking at Photographs, (WHamette, Ind., 1977). Brooke's paradigm (description, analysis, Interpretation, evolution) 1s also explicit, 1f not so simply organized, throughout Beardsley's Aesthetics, below.

(23) Monroe C. Beardsley, Aesthetics: Problems 1 n the Phllosophy of Criticism, (New York, Harcourt/Brace/World, 1958), pp. 473- 474.

(24) Arthur C. Danto, "Artworks and Real Things," 1n Morris PhlHpson and Paul J. Gudel, eds., Aesthetics Today, (New York, Meridian, rev. ed., 1980), pp. 322-336.

(25) Suresh Raval, Metacr1t1c1sm, (Athens, Univ. of Georqla Press, 1981). "The Concept of Criticism," pp. 177-178.

(26) Minor White, Richard Zakla, Peter Lorenz, The New Zone System Manual, (Dobbs Ferry, New York, Morgan & Morgan, 1976).

(27) Footnote 11, supra, 1b1d.

(28) Footnote 16, supra, 1 bid.

(29) John Pettlbone, "Intermedia Criticism: A Theory and a Demonstration," unpublished M.A. Thesis, Department of Photography & Cinema, The Ohio State University, 1983. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

The following books are basic references which this work 1s concerned, or are Inspirational to Its points of view. Other, more specific references will be found at the end of each chapter, referring to the footnotes.

Capra, F rltjo f, The Tao of Physics, (New York, Bantam, 1975).

Eaqleton, Terry, Aqalnst the Grain, Essays 1975-1985, (London, Verso, 1986).

------t Literary Theory, An Introduction, (Minneapolis, Univ. of Minnesota Press), 198’^

Foster, Hal, ed., The Ant1-Aesthet1c: Essays og Postmodern Culture, (Port Townsend, bash., Bay Press, 1985).

Green, Jonathan, American Photography: A C ritical History, 1945 to the Present, (New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1064).

Krauss, Rosalind, The O riginality of_ the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, (Cambridge, MlT Press, lfr8fe).

Norris, Christopher, The DeconstructlveTurn: Essays 1n the Rhetoric of Philosophy, (New Vork, Methuen, 1983).

Raval, Suresh, Metacr1t1c1sm, (Athens, Univ. of Georgia Press, 1981). "The Concept of Criticism," pp. 177-178. de Rlencourt, Amaury, The Eye of Shiva: Eastern Mysticism and Science, (New York, Wm. Morrow, 1981).

Sekula, Allan, Photography Aqalnst the Grain: Essays and Photo Works. 1973-83, (Halifax, Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1984).

Sontag, Susan, On Photography, (New York, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1973).

WalHs, Brian, ed., Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation, (Boston, Godlne, 1084).

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