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Body and Soul BODY AND SOUL WARWICK CLARKE MASTER OF FINE ARTS 2008 “The course of history was therefore not that of a billiard ball – which, once it is hit, takes a definite line – but resembles the movement of clouds, or the path of a man sauntering through the streets, turned aside by a shadow here, a crowd there, an unusual architectural outcrop, until at last he arrives at a place he never knew or meant to go. Inherent in the course of history is a certain going off course.” —Robert Musil1 1 R. Musil, The Man Without Qualities, trans. Sophie Wilkins, ed. Burton Pike, Knopf, New York, 1995, p. 392. ii ABSTRACT The research component, “Body and Soul”, is an interdisciplinary, comparative study of the essay form, focusing on the Weimar period. The essay is a marginal literary genre, which, like much documentary style photography, attempts “the imaginative recreation of a culture, a period or an individual”. August Sander’s photographic opus, People of the 20th Century and Robert Musil’s essayistic novel, The Man Without Qualities invite comparison as complex and problematic portraits of their respective societies. Sander’s typological portraits are well known and his legacy informs much of contemporary documentary photography. Sixty images were published in 1929 by Kurt Wolff, Transmare Verlag, Munich, as Antlitz der Zeit (Face of Our Time) with an introduction by Alfred Döblin. The first two volumes of Robert Musil’s, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (The Man Without Qualities), were published in 1930 and 1932 by Rowohlt Verlag, Hamburg. Recent publication of new editions of both Musil’s and Sander’s works prompted the attempt to reconcile two portraits of people and events of the early decades of the 20th Century in Germany and Austria. The essay form in literature and the documentary style in photography are examined with regard to the polemic associated with truth and reality. This review attempts to illustrate the inevitable inclusion of the fictional element into the fabric of both forms of investigation. The study concludes with a review of contemporary art practice in photo- documentary and some thoughts on future developments. The studio component, “Dargan”, is a photographic essay of a site in the Blue Mountains West of Sydney. Focusing on relics of industrial activity in the region, and their effects on the landscape, large format colour photographs were produced to establish a documentary style body of work for exhibition as large-scale colour analogue prints. The work is the response to a need to engage with the Australian landscape and to establish a sustainable practice that recognises and takes into account an ambivalent relationship with “country”. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my supervisor, Maureen Burns, and my associate supervisor, Debra Phillips, for their help, advice and support throughout this period of study. Thanks are due also to Lynne Roberts-Goodwin, Dr. Michele Barker, Sue Blackburn, Craig Bender and Kat Borishkewich. Special thanks to Sandra Barnard for the prints exhibited at the Ivan Dougherty Gallery and also to Nicholas Waterlow, Annabel Pegus, Rilka Oakley, Yvonne Donaldson and Adrian Davies. The exhibition was mounted with the assistance of a grant from the Arc@UNSW GAS scheme which is gratefully acknowledged. Research abroad was facilitated by a UNSW CoFA Research Grant. For invaluable assistance at The August Sander Archive, thanks to Gabriele Conrath-Scholl and Patricia Edgar of Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne. In Hamburg, Eckhard Kloos of Rowohlt Verlag, Robert Musil’s publisher, gave generously of his time and at the Robert Musil Literature Museum in Klagenfurt, Austria, thanks are due to Dr. Heimo Strempfl. Finally, I would like to thank my friends and family, especially Lara and Jasmin for their understanding and unfailing support, and Skye O’neill for editorial services rendered. And to Susan, without whose patience, and encouragement, this work would not have been possible to undertake nor sustain to completion. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………...iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………………………………………….iv “A SORT OF INTRODUCTION”……………………………………………………...1 ESSAY…………………………………………………………………………………...4 ESSAYISMUS/ROBERT MUSIL…………………………………………………… 16 AUGUST SANDER …………………………………………………………………...28 DOCUMENTARY …………………………………………………………………….42 CONCLUSIONS ………………………………………………………………………52 BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………………………………………………………………...57 PLATES ………………………………………………………………………………..62 v “A SORT OF INTRODUCTION” “From which remarkably enough nothing develops.” —Robert Musil1 “How might a photograph and a text, closely associated in time, space and historical import, elaborate ‘readings’ of each other? Or, more precisely, how might the viewer, mediator of both image and text, through reading them interactively discover in each some key(s) to the meaning of the other?” —Susan H. Aiken2 In this study, the photographs in question are documentary style portraits produced by the German, August Sander. Sixty images were published in 1929 by Kurt Wolff, Transmare Verlag, Munich, as Antlitz der Zeit (Face of Our Time) with an introduction by Alfred Döblin, author of Berlin Alexanderplatz. Sander’s intention was to generate interest for the subsequent publication of a far more comprehensive work Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts (People of the 20th Century). The text is by Austrian Robert Musil, whose novella, Die Verwirrung des Zöglings Törless (The Confusions of Young Törless) first appeared in 1906. Its critical success contributed to Musil’s eventual choice of a literary career. The first two volumes of his masterpiece Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, (The Man Without Qualities) were published in 1930 and 1932 by Rowohlt Verlag, Hamburg. Both authors attempted to create portraits of their respective societies and cultures, Musil with words, Sander with photographs. Both attempts made claims to truth, derived from direct observation and lived experience. More recently, publication of new editions of both major works prompted this attempt to reconcile two portraits of the people and events of the early decades of the 20th Century in Germany and Austria. A new English translation of Musil’s magnum opus by Sophie Wilkins and Burton Pike was published in two volumes by Knopf in 1995. Sander’s archive is held by Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne. A revised and newly compiled edition of Menschen des 20. 1 R. Musil, The Man Without Qualities, trans. Sophie Wilkins, ed. Burton Pike, Knopf, New York, 1995, p. 1. 2 S. H. Aiken, “Isak Dinesen and Photo/Graphic Recollection”, Illuminations, eds. L. Heron and V. Williams I.B. Tauris, London, 1996, pp. 460-470. 1 Jahrhunderts was published by this institution in 2002 to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the photographer’s birth. Comprising seven volumes, and containing 619 photographs, it is the most comprehensive realisation yet of Sander’s original concept and the result of intensive research by Susanne Lange, Gabriele Conrath-Scholl and Sander’s grandson, Gerd Sander. In Sander’s words, “The individual does not make the history of his time, but he both impresses himself on it and expresses its meaning. It is possible to record the historical physiognomic image of a whole generation and … to make that image speak in photographs.”3 Incomplete at the time of their respective deaths, both author’s manifestos were essentially “overtaken by history.” Structurally, the essay form is one of the many threads that link the bodies of work discussed here. “… the word ‘essay’ comes from the French essai and essayer, to attempt, to experiment, to try out and further back from the Latin exagium, ‘weighing’ an object or an idea, examining it from various angles, but never exhaustively or systematically”.4 The German equivalent Versuch incorporates the notions of “attempt” and “search”. The essay is a marginal genre in literature where “… the aesthetic organization of the material remains subordinated to the treatment of an event or situation that exists in time and space, of an idea or text which the essayist is ultimately committed to telling the ‘truth’ about, a truth which he himself is answerable for.”5 It is the aim of this work to show the analogous nature of both the essay and the documentary style photograph. To achieve this end, analyses are made of both Musil’s and Sander’s major works. The Paris albums of Eugène Atget are examined, as are contemporary work by Thomas Struth and Bernd and Hilla Becher. Elements of fiction are introduced into all story telling, and while the essay and the document aspire to positions of truth, both are inevitably enhanced, made more true, more real, when the contingencies of lived experience are permitted to intrude into their respective spaces. In this respect, a brief review of photographic “process” is included. The exegesis concludes with a series of plates representing the studio research component of the study. 3 A. Sander, ‘The Nature and Growth of Photography, Lecture 5: Photography as a Universal Language’ trans. Anne Halley, The Massachusettes Review, vol. 19, no. 4, 1978. pp. 674-679. 4 C. De Obaldia, The Essayistic Spirit, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1995, p. 2. 5 ibid. p. 5 2 “Dargan” is a collection of large format documentary style colour photographs of relics of industrial activity in the Blue Mountains region, west of Sydney. Executed for subsequent exhibition as large-scale colour analogue prints, the photographs are the outcome of a number of investigations over the period of this study. While previous work was limited to the portrait genre, this essay is a response to a need to reconcile one’s place in the Australian landscape and to establish a sustainable practice that recognises and takes into account the ambivalent relationship that we, as Australians, have developed with the bush, with country. 3 ESSAY “The thoughts of the essay lie firmly and immovably fixed in a basalt consisting of feelings, will, and personal experience, in such combinations of idea-complexes that only in the spiritual atmosphere of a unique inner situation do they give off and receive light.
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