Touching Photographs { margaret olin } Touching photographs the university of chicago press chicago and london margaret olin is a senior research scholar in the Divinity School, with joint appointments in the Departments of History of Art and Religious Studies and in the Program in Judaic Studies The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 at Yale University. The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2012 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2012. Printed in China 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 1 2 3 4 5 ISBN-13: 978-0-226-62646-8 (paper) ISBN-10: 0-226-62646-6 (paper) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Olin, Margaret Rose, 1948– Touching photographs / Margaret Olin. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-226-62646-8 (pbk : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-226-62646-6 (pbk : alk. paper) 1. Photographs—Psy- chological aspects. 2. Photography—Social aspects. 3. Photography in literature. 4. Barthes, Roland. Chambre claire. 5. Evans, Walker, 1903–1975. 6. Van Der Zee, James, 1886–1983. 7. September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001. I. Title. TR183.045 2012 770.01'9—dc22 2011016695 This book has been printed on acid-free paper. For Bob and George, our colleagues and students, and their legacy contents Acknowledgments ix 1 Introduction: Tactile Looking 21 1ts “ I I Not Going to Be Easy to Look into Their Eyes” Privilegef o Perception in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men 51 2 Roland Barthes’s “Mistaken” Identification 71 3 “ From One Dark Shore to the Other” The Epiphany of the Image in Hugo von Hofmannsthal and W. G. Sebald 101 4 Putting Down Photographic Roots in Harlem James VanDerZee 131 5 Looking through Their Eyes Photographic Empowerment 161 6 Five Stories of 9/11 225 Epilogue: Bad Pictures Notes 235 Index 263 acknowledgments Photography, as this book will show, makes connections with people. In my early years in photography, I approached people I barely knew and asked per- mission to take portraits of them in their homes or workplaces. There they would tell me their stories or sing me their songs. On a busy sidewalk, people stopped to chat as I waited by my view camera to capture “the sunlight and how it fell.” Photography may have been an art form, but it was also a way to loiter and meet people. It also seemed to take ages to make a picture, and it cost a fortune. Scholarship is not a good way to loiter, but, like photography, it is a good a way to meet people. It is also, like photography, lengthy and costly. Aaron Siskind gave me my first invaluable lessons in this art form at the Institute of Design in Chicago. Later, participation in studio critiques at the School of the Art Institute enriched my education in photographic practices. I am grateful to the staff, students, and faculty there, where nearly two decades ago I first developed the ideas that led to this book. During these years, students in my seminars read and reread with me texts by James Agee, Roland Barthes, and many other authors, and helped me refine my ideas. Thanks also to the curators at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library; the Studio Museum of Harlem; the Hatch-Billops Collection and its curators, James Hatch and Camille Billops; ix and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Susan Meiselas graciously opened her studio and archives to me; Carlota Duarte, of the Archivo Pho- tográphico Indigena, San Cristobál de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, answered my questions, as did Lynn Warschafsky and other members of the Institute for Photographic Empowerment at the University of Southern California’s An- nenberg School for Communication & Journalism. At the Francis W. Parker School in Chicago, Christine Beh and the late Ann Hills facilitated my visit. I am grateful to Charles Traub and Michael Shulan, organizers of Here Is New York; to Mark Lubell, who answered many of my questions about the exhibit; and to Mickey Kerr and Timothy Soter, photographers who allowed me to use their submissions to Here Is New York and discussed them with me; Arne Mutert, of the Bundesamt für politische Erziehung; James N. Saunders and Terry Miles, of Bellevue Hospital Center, New York; and Sarah Henry, of the Museum of the City of New York. At the now-defunct St. Vincent’s Catholic Medical Center in Manhattan, I owe a debt of gratitude, for their time, their memories, and their expertise, to Sister Miriam Kevin Phillips, Chief Mission Officer; Michael Fagan, Director of Media and Government Relations; James Leach, archivist; and Lisa Feldman, medical photographer. At the Northeast Document Conservation Center, Andover, Massachusetts, my thanks to Ann Russell, former director; Walter Newman, head conservator; and Carolyn Frisa, former conservator. Audiences for conferences at Trent University, Ontario; Boston Univer- sity; the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee; Columbia; Yale; Rice Univer- sity; the Getty Research Institute; Hunter College of The City University of New York; the Speed Art Museum, Louisville; the Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam; the University of New York at Stony Brook; the University of Cork, Ireland; the University of Toronto; and the University of Copenha- gen all challenged me with perceptive questions at my presentations. So did readers for the journals where some of these essays first appeared (Katherine Bergeron read my essay on Roland Barthes for Representations; others remained anonymous). The many artists and scholars, students, teachers, and others who joined me in thinking and rethinking the issues in this book include Mi- chele Bogart, Jonathan Bordo, Ann Boyd, Alan Cohen, Bridget Cooks, Paula Duffy, Dan Eisenberg, James Elkins, Jane Gallop, Lydia Goehr, Camara Hollo- way, Maud Lavin, Elliot G. Mishler, Mary Patton, Kym Pinder, Ellen Rothen- berg, Mette Sandbye, Deb Olin Unferth, Susan Ward, and Heidi C. R. N. Winterburn. Alex Marx shepherded me around post-9/11 lower Manhattan and shared his experiences with me. Christopher Pinney’s patient readings of draft after draft for the University of Chicago Press substantially affected x acknowledgments the manuscript. Dario Gamboni lent his support to the project after reading an early draft of part of it. I am grateful also to several anonymous readers of the manuscript for their useful suggestions, all of which had an impact on this book. A series of research and technical assistants soldiered their way through the manuscript. I owe thanks to Amir Berbic, who helped me with my initial attempts to create a photographic text; to Brad Farwell, Lindsay Page, and Daniel Everett, who scanned negatives for me; and to Jen Morris, who taught me how to do it myself. All of them provided me with much useful techni- cal information and taught me new skills. Joey Orr helped with research and compiled my first working bibliography. My research assistants, the tenacious Abby Glogower and Heather Vermeulen, helped me in the grueling task of gathering illustrations. “Tenacious” also applies to Susan Bielstein, my editor at the University of Chicago Press. Like photography, writing books can take a long time. Su- san acquired the manuscript several years ago and continued to support and guide it—and me—through multiple rounds of readings and revisions. An- thony W. Burton patiently answered question after question about numerous issues, technical and otherwise. I am grateful for Sandra Hazel’s careful copy- editing, Laura J. Avey’s help with marketing and other matters, and Ryan Li’s artful design of the book. Finally, I have found writing and publishing a book even more costly than making photographs. Luckily, organizations stepped in to help. The Na- tional Endowment for the Humanities once awarded me a grant for a planned anthology on theories of perception. Plans changed and the intended anthol- ogy never appeared, but the research I did strengthened the present book in- stead. The School of the Art Institute supported my research with multiple Faculty Enrichment Grants, and I benefited from the support of the office of Carol Becker, former Senior Vice-President for Academic Affairs, as well. The Department of the History of Art at Yale University contributed a substantial and generous sum toward the cost of printing the color illustrations. This book was written in two institutional homes. At the School of the Art Institute, besides the people already mentioned, I owe much of my com- fort to Shay DeGrandis, Senior Administrative Director of the Department of Modern Art History, Theory and Criticism; and Teena McClelland, Adminis- trative Director of the Department of Visual and Critical Studies. For offer- ing me a comfortable and welcoming new institutional home, I am grateful to Harold W. Attridge, Dean of the Yale Divinity School, and for housing me in style, Maria Rosa Menocal, Director of the Whitney Humanities Center at xi acknowledgments Yale University. For many services, I want to thank Renee Reed, Senior Admin- istrative Assistant of the Program in Judaic Studies, and also Christina Andrio- tis, administrative assistant of the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale, who in addition had a hand in one of the photographs in the book. I have occasion to thank some of these people and many others in the context of individual chapters. To those whose omission I will only realize af- ter publication, I apologize in advance. I also owe thanks and apologies to my patient husband and my wonderful children, Ben and Sheba, many of whose formative years I spent engaged in working on this book. xii acknowledgments Tactile Looking introduction metaphors of photography In examining photographic pictures of a certain and touch degree of perfection, the use of a large lens is recommended, such as elderly persons frequently employ in reading.