Niépce Museum catalog essay

One critical moment in the history of Western culture came in the seventh century A.D. in Nicaea, a city in Asia Minor. At that time, the leaders of the Christian church were meeting to discuss the use of ikons or ritual “portrait” images within the church. Had the ikon been judged heretical and thus banned from church teachings as the “graven image” of the Second Commandment to Moses, it would be difficult to imagine the look of Western culture. The decision to allow the use of ikons has literally made us see ourselves, fourteen hundred years later, in a vastly different Light.

Ideologically the religious ikon is a direct though distant predecessor of the photograph image. However, the spiritual values inspiring the production and use of the ikon are only dimly reflected in secular photographic portraits that fill the Modern world. Something has been lost or misunderstood in the succeeding generations of technological, economic, and scientific evolution.

Despite this, the fundamental connection between photography and the ineffable spiritual essences of Light creates the possibility of spiritual expression in the act of portraiture. Equally important is the powerful spiritual element of human contact and dialogue in portrait work.

We Moderns have been taught how to look when we are being photographed. In some way a portrait measures how well we have accepted or rejected the photographic examples impressed upon us from early childhood. In this Modern Age, our own histories are inseparable from our photographic histories. We build internal pictures of our selves, our families, our friends, and our world on a more or less fragmented foundation of photographic imagery. These images come to exist from a variety of sources, the most common are the ubiquitous snapshots that fill our family albums. It is these images that have a profound influence on the way we think of and see ourselves — perhaps more than any other single source — mass-media included. The advent of the video-camera has only deepened the psychological effect by adding the truth of motion to our memories. The very fact that our own self-images and indeed, our memories, are built on photographic evidence makes our active relationship with photography a complex expression of personal values. This relationship is further confused because our vision — how we actually see and comprehend the sensual world — is firmly built upon the particular syntax of how a camera sees.

The photographs in this exhibition are essentially private images; their purpose is not to publicly document private situations. Rather, they provide an opportunity simply to see people as partners in an image-making process. Using these photographs in an exhibition — a public communication — possibly transforms their content. Because they stand to lose their private, ritual context in the public context of the museum, it is proper to consider briefly some of the critical social issues in portrait photography.

Photography, as a prominent element of the modern culture of the spectacle carries the onerous burden of power, manipulation, and control. The operation of these actions is inherent in even the most innocent image-making, and especially so in the social process of portraiture. Formal situations of photography in the consumer marketplace — fashion, advertising, photojournalism, and especially pornography — are frequently obvious in their exploitation of the powerless subject. The comparison between the gun and the camera is often disturbingly accurate where the photograph is merely evidence of the possession, the capturing, or the “killing” of a place, an object, or a person. Often even in family albums one sees an oppressive power and control in the arrangement and gestures of the subjects, and also, who is not in the image — that is, who is taking the picture. The photographic subjects are the victims of this manipulation as they are stripped of their be-ing and reduced to objects to be looked at. Trust is a word that seldom enters into discussions of typical subjective photography.

Is it possible to make a portrait without it being a theft or a killing of something personal, something soul-full, of the other?

The answer to this question lies somewhere on the way from taking a picture to sharing the ritual act of image-making. The idea that portraiture can be a ritual is a key to understanding how it is possible to move it beyond the culturally imposed limits that these critical issues imply.

When making images of people, I often sense a struggle for control that I recognize as an expression of my own cultural psychology. I am always acutely self-conscious of the flux of energies that circulate between subject and photographer. There must be a clear respect for the other, not as subject, but simply as the dialectic Other. In fact, this flux is as elemental and as vital as any other human contact. A state of complete and sympathetic attention is required to sustain positive energy in this type of contact between two people.

The genesis for the images in this exhibition is somewhere between veneration and love. Veneration through the energies of Time and Light that are arrested and that preserve Life in this special, transformed state; Love through the powerful force of dialectic human relationship.

Most of the photographs are of people that I know well, people who are comfortable collaborating with me in image-making. Frequently the photographs are made on the very same occasions that a typical family album snapshot would be made — special visits, dinners, holidays, and so on. Because I often follow the familiar etiquette that is accepted for a typical family album picture, the images have both the naturalness and the formal dignity inherent in a cultural ritual. Occasionally I make portraits of people that I have met only once, briefly, where I feel a certain rapport, where the request to do a portrait is meaningful, where it is possible, and where it will have a positive outcome. This shared act of image-making deepens the momentary interaction and creates a future of possibility in an otherwise chance meeting.

In all cases, by concentrating on the vitality of the moment, the ritual moment, I find it is possible to move from the simple objective/subjective photographic act to the dialogue of Life itself. The concepts of object and subject are not absolute in the living dynamic of ritual. It is possible to make the photographic act deepen the ongoing dialogue between two humans — again, as a shared ritual. The singular material result, a photographic portrait, is one distillation of the instant when two Life-lines intersected.

If a ritual is established and carefully honored, it is possible for the spiritual to enter into it.

The greatest expression of thanks must first go to those friends, family, and strangers whose images are in this exhibition — for their willingness to join with me in the open ritual of being photographed. I would also like to thank M. Paul JAY for his patient endurance of my poor French during my yearly visits to Chalon and also the generosity of the Museum in arranging this exhibition and catalog. From the very first time I arrived, as a hitch-hiker, in Chalon-sur-Sâone in 1986, and after many visits, I have always enjoyed the beautiful and friendly Chalonaise atmosphere. Whenever I lecture on the history of photography, I say that it is no coincidence that Niépce invented photography in Sâone-et-Loire — it is a place where the Light is indeed silver and the air is clear! Thanks also to the Photography Museum of Reykjavík for providing a good laboratory when I most needed one.