Following the feedback I received from my tutor, I decided to rework both my selection of images for this assignment and the way I presented them.
I decided that a more uniform presentation would avoid breaking the series and allow me to concentrate more closely on particular aspects of the images. I narrowed my set of artefacts to just the books I have in my possession from one line of my family—all of which are related to Christian worship in the Church of England. Furthermore, each book carries an inscription with either the name of my grandfather or my great-grandmother and, in some cases their names in their own handwriting.
I re-shot the assignment with a clearer sense of purpose and did my best to maintain consistency of approach: two shots of each book (closed and opened to the inscription page), no ruler for scale (I decided that the effort to be clinical or ‘archaeological’ was a bit forced), and a plain white background with even lighting. This last consideration has turned out to be more difficult than I thought it might—I’ve done my best to maintain a consistent white balance across the images, but it is not quite perfect.
In sum, the little collection of devotional books gives a glimpse into one aspect of the childhoods of two family members. I do not know if they continued church attendance into adulthood. It’s not a lot on which to build an understanding of a branch of the family: some books that suggest a degree of religious observance in youth, some handwriting, a surname, place names from the island my family left in the mid-1960s. In this sense, I think that the shots respond to the brief for Assignment 2 (photographing the unseen) by being suggestive rather than conclusive about family origins and identity.
Still, the connections are there if I choose to make them, as I see things that continue to be important to me: books, history, faith and place. Other viewers will almost certainly imagine other “unseens” in response to the series.
Following the self-portrait that I created for Assignment 3, where I explored visually my fear of dancing, I decided to construct an image where I could again portray something that has been occupying my thoughts: aging. In this case, the issue is less one of fear and more a question of making sense of my changing place in the world. I will be eligible to retire in 2021, which still seems surprising to me. I am not yet ‘old,’ but I am clearly not a young man, either. It is the experience of ‘in-betweenness’ that I wanted to suggest in a photograph.
I am looking backward and forward at the same time: more than half of my life is behind me, but there may be several decades yet ahead. I want my viewers to ask themselves, in effect, “[…] is it a mirror, reflecting a portrait of the artist who made it, or a window, through which one might better know the world?” (Szarkowski and Museum of Modern Art, 1978:25).
My starting point was Ilse Bing’s Self-Portrait in Mirrors, 1931, which seemed a clever way to ensure that the photographer is at once both viewed and viewer. Bing’s play with reflections in a self-portrait means that she can see herself, look at the viewer, and see herself being seen. Her image allows for self-examination, a subject who is not only a participant in the visual game being played, but also to a large degree the one controlling it. Bing’s self-portrait reveals the mechanics of the artifice that lies behind the image, like a magician showing how a trick works. It is the ‘knowingness’ of the picture that is so intriguing—Bing knows that the viewer is viewing her and returns the favour with confidence: “The double presence of the artist at work, and the intentness of her gaze, serves to highlight the newfound independence that women were enjoying at the time, while the prominent inclusion of the camera symbolises the burgeoning technical revolution of the period and the fresh opportunity for creative expression it enabled” (AnOther, 2016). The items scattered around the desk may appear random and casual, but the care shown in the way the shot is set up suggests that nothing has been left to chance. Bing is in charge of it all.
If Ilse Bing was direct and face-on, I was also gripped by Tracey Moffat’s Spanish Window, a large-scale photograph of the back view of a woman looking out of a window that I saw during a visit to the National Gallery of Canada. There is a calm harmony between the outdoor lighting, the palette inside the room and the tones in the woman’s hair, skin and clothes. But most striking is the sense of intruding on a private moment and the way the woman’s face is hidden. Part of Moffat’s Body Remembers series, the photograph invites the viewer to imagine what the woman is contemplating in the scene before her and what she might be remembering. The result is quietly disturbing: “It is day but the paraffin lamp is lit. Like a Magritte, there’s a sense of disquiet. The light is wrong, the day is wrong, something unseen is wrong” (Searle, 2017). Moffat stands at a threshold between interior and exterior worlds, at “the collision of looking and being looked at” (Stephens, 2019). It is an invitation to the viewer to see the world—and a family history—through Moffat’s eyes as she embodies a domestic servant, a role played by both her mother and grandmother (Tracey Moffatt: Vigils, s.d.). This is a running theme throughout much of Moffat’s work, as she slyly compels her audience to confront issues of ‘otherness’: women and girls facing male oppression, Indigenous identity and its suppression, colonialism and its aftermath, and rural versus urban experience and opportunity.
I was determined to find a way to incorporate all the elements: a back-view of the subject, a window with an exterior view, an interior, a mirror, and a gaze that confronts the viewer. According to Elina Brotherus, a subject shot from behind is an “invitation to a shared contemplation” while a subject shot head-on is a “confrontation” (Brotherus, 2015). Rather than use the mirror to catch the photographer armed with a camera, I wanted to ensure that it is the viewer who is “caught looking” (McDowell, 2008:199).
In her series “12 ans après” Brotherus’ (Elina Brotherus, s.d.) frequent use of mirror images in self-portraits serve as a visual metaphor for reflecting on her own life as she returns to a former residence. The mirror also makes explicit that the artist is playing a double-role as both the viewer and the viewed. Brotherus’ visible use of a cable release in a number of the images also makes explicit the artifice involved: I know what I’m doing, I’m showing you what I’m doing and now we both know that we know. There is apparently no mask, and that is exactly the artifice.
I aimed for a similar degree of ‘knowingness’ in my own image—the viewer and I make eye contact—but I tried to give it a twist so viewers could also believe for a moment that they are viewing me from behind, unguarded. David Campany touches on this element of awareness in his discussion of Jeff Wall’s well-known Picture for Women: “A photograph automatically produces a double of the world, a naturalistic substitute. A photo that includes a mirror doubles the double. Moreover it promises a mastering knowledge of the whole phenomenon, for photographer and viewer. The mirror image is photography made ‘self-conscious’ in a very direct, if literal, way” (Campany, 2007:23).
My self-portrait serves two purposes, then. It is an opportunity for me to explore a point in life where I feel compelled to look both forward and behind. And it is also a statement that, in carefully constructing this image, I am ready for a new stage in my development as a photographer:
[…] photographers will often seek out the camera’s own kinds of echoes in mirrors and reflections. Most point the camera at the mirror at an early stage in their exploration of the medium. It is more than just a coming to terms with the nature of the apparatus as a picturing device. While discovering what photography is for them, they attempt to confirm or recognise themselves as photographers. The two go together in a private moment of self-assertion, made public when the resulting image is fixed (Campany, 2007:23).
David Campany (2007) ‘‘A Theoretical Diagram in an Empty Classroom’: Jeff Wall’s Picture for Women’ In: Oxford Art Journal 30 (1) pp.9–25. At: www.jstor.org/stable/4500042 (Accessed 03/05/2020).
Szarkowski, J. and Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) (eds.) (1978) Mirrors and windows: American photography since 1960. New York : Boston: Museum of Modern Art ; distributed by New York Graphic Society.
Context and Narrative 