The third space
Photography’s quarrel with ink
By David Brittain
In 1990, some were surprised to see that the photographers' magazine had survived the previous year's 150th anniversary of the birth of photography – enshrining as it did the end of the historic struggle to win photography artistic credentials. The previous two decades had not been easy for the photographers' magazine and the institution of the portfolio page. Many of the works of art that received critical attention were concerned with reproduction. Their meanings and purpose came from an engagement on some level with the media-saturated environment. And while it's true that much of this art was in some way photographic - from Warhol to Ruscha to Sherman - the photographers' magazine, still with its lofty mission to win photographers respectability, seemed badly suited to the task of interpreting it.
(Photo
image cover 3,4,5,6):
The Photo Image issue 3, Japan, 1970: cover and inside
spreads. This magazine combined appropriated images and sophisticated production
In some ways this type of publication, by now an international brand, hadn't evolved much since the first photographers’ magazine of the media age - Aperture. Aperture - arguably the inspiration for much that followed – was styled self-consciously after Camera Work, founded in 1903. Aperture was co-founded around 50 years later by “straight” apostles of Stieglitz including Ansel Adams, Beaumont Newhall and Minor White, who became editor. Such was White's almost mystical identification with Stieglitz that he once refused to publish more issues of Aperture than existed of Camera Work.
The early Aperture is remembered today as the ne plus ultra of photographers’ magazines. It felt very precious; the reproduction was the best available, yet editorials constantly focused on the superiority, transcendence and epistemological uniqueness of the photographers' fine print, compared with its surrogate. This ambiguous attitude to the reproduction - that it had to be the very best, but could never attain the perfection of the hand-made original – originated with Stieglitz. In Camera Work issue one he wrote, “It is, therefore, highly necessary that reproductions of photographic work must be made with exceptional care and discretion if the spirit of the originals is to be retained, though no reproductions can do full justice to the subtlties of some photographs.”
(Murder
1,2,3): The "murder research"
issue 21 of Image Nation, published by Coach House press, Toronto. Cover
and inside picture with images by Ken Fletcher and Paul Wong May
One of Stieglitz’s rationales for publishing Camera Work was to attract visitors to his photography gallery where they could be “converted” by exposure to an original photograph[i] . Stieglitz was determined to give photography what was lacking in even the finest reproduction - what Walter Benjamin, three decades later, would call the work of art’s “presence in time and space its unique existence at the place where it happens to be." [ii]
(Camera
2 and camera cover):
Swiss Camera English edition, Nov 1972, No 11 with
a Diane Arbus picture on the cover and a portfolio inside
For White, who once wrote an essay called “Silence of Seeing”, the appreciation of art photography required a respectful space and a meditative attitude. The white spaces[iii] of the portfolio pages symbolically protected the image from the peripheral distractions of popular culture, and also focused the self-aware viewer on the absence/ co-existence of an original. In his famous essay on photomechanical reproduction, Benjamin counterpoised two types of production: cinema was radical because it embraced reproduction, while the work of art, which resisted the politicization of reproduction, attracted “cult value” (a residue of the art work's traditional function in ancient ritual) and would "demand" to be concealed. By removing the original print from exposure to collective consumption twice over - temporally (as original it preceded the reproduction) and spatially (the print was autonomous, the page schematic and multiple) - Aperture ensured its “unique existence” in time and space. In this way the magazine updated Stieglitz’s project for the age of the global village.
Aperture's use of the portfolio page as “insulation” was, on the other hand, analogous to the way that photography historians and curators, for instance, were working to proscribe commercial and social photography from the canon[iv] . This attests to the institutional aspirations of the photographers’ magazine[v]. For another characteristic of this sort of publication - that is attributable to Aperture - was a tendency to deny its existence as a periodical among periodicals. Magazines of course, have always been considered "trivial" compared with newspapers (unless, of course they had the high moral purpose of LIFE or Picture Post at times of national emergency). One way an art photography magazine could be taken more seriously was by publishing scholarly texts that stressed its cultural mission. Another way was to cultivate "timelessness". Just as editors favoured the “enduring” and “universal” image, so signs of disposability and entropy - fashionable design and fonts, perishable paper and especially topical adverts - were generally eschewed by photographers' magazines the world round[vi] .
(Aperture
pics):
Aperture's treatment of Robert Frank's photographs.
Two spreads from Aperture 9:1 1961
In the modernist context of the photographers’ magazine, the transformation of the photograph into a high quality reproduction was acceptable, even desirable from a pragmatic point of view. But any attempt to impose the stylised texts of print (design, fonts and so on) to nuance the authored text (be it image or image/text) has always been taboo. In Swiss Camera, for instance, the editors would strip out all evidence of editorial mediation in an effort, it would seem, to invoke the presence of the matted print. The effect, of course, was to make the print more absent, not more present. The signs of magazine culture were seen as being detrimental to the good standing of photography and photographers – especially their claims to authorship. [vii]
By 1985, when Aperture published its 100th issue, almost a decade after Minor White's death, many photographers' magazines had adapted their contents to reflect the cultural shift towards the reproduction. This special issue, edited by Mark Holborn, contained articles on Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince. Yet the presentation of Prince's work betrayed the limited degree to which the art photography magazine could engage with such emerging photographic practices as appropriation and re-photography, not to mention photocopy art and magazines-as-art. Prince’s re-photographed magazine pages were presented in the lofty manner reserved for an “enduring” portfolio by Paul Strand or Stieglitz (this was somehow inappropriate because the originals were themselves copies of reproductions).
(Camerawork):
Camera Work 14, 1906 illustrated with a picture by
Stieglitz of the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession
Of course, work such as Prince's was understood to be part of an institutional critique of authorship, the notion of the original art work, and - by default - the modernist institution of photography as art. As a major institution within art photography, the photographers’ magazine was obviously exposed – at least compromised - when addressing issues around reproduction, seriality, authorship and so on.
The international photographers' magazine, that tireless advocate of the art of photography, survived two decades dominated by the arts of reproduction. As an acknowledged pillar of the institution of the art of photography, the photographers' magazine was only partially equipped to deal with these new photographies and the challenges they posed to its modernist identity. For some, the medium-specific environment of the photographers’ magazine began to seem willfully remote from the popular experience of photography - as an infinitely reproducible and disposable, floating sign.
The 70s saw the master photographer and the fine print accepted as part of culture, but it also saw the emergence of the post-Pop image manipulator – designers, collagists, samplers and artists such as Hans-Peter Feldmann, whose practice was more about process than the production of rare objects.
(FILE
PIC 1): Willoughby Sharp, Avalanche editor, encourages subscribers
in FILE by posing with a LIFE cover
At the same time a new sort of visual magazine appeared. Born of the idealism of the counter-culture, its existence announced the coming of age of a sophisticated media-literate reader/author. This realm is what you might call the third space of photography. Third space publications employed the tools of magazine publishing but instead of obeying the profit motive, they favoured a marginal existence that enabled critical or experimental engagement with image culture, making themselves relatively immune from copyright litigation. They share a curiosity about reproduction: about the arts of reproduction (which Benjamin described as having “exhibition value” since the locus of attention shifts from the work itself to the point of intersection between work and viewer) and also the “poetics” of print and the mailing system. In contrast with the "timeless" quality of photographers' magazines, these were ephemeral and often cheaply produced. In contrast to the purity of the portfolio page we find the “mess” of designed layouts. Instead of the advocacy of an art of photography we find photographic iconoclasm in the form of pastiche, parody, and camp; meanwhile the fine print is subject to conceptual “dematerialisation”.
(Image
bank ad: FILE Vol 1),
No 3 carries an ad from a member of the image exchange organisation, Image
bank, soliciting "z-Rox X-periments"
I will mention very briefly two such titles that seem to have combined photography and periodical production to make something that both reflected and intervened in its cultural moment. Both belong to a class of publications – magazines and small, one-off publications for mailing – that have been called “original reproductions”. Both magazines allude to the two worlds they inhabit and symbolically straddle: magazine culture and the art world. The editors treat the magazine page as a “primary” site of contemporary photo-based art works that allude to media culture.
The first one is FILE, edited between 1972 and 1989 by an artists' collective called General Idea. FILE had at least three functions: as an information source for mail artists and image swappers, as a bridge connecting disparate communities of Canadian artists, and as an art work in itself. The title is an anagram of LIFE and the parodic use of its iconic namesake's broadsheet format and signature red cover embellishments was a key part of its meaning[viii]. Over 17 years FILE was a major outlet for the concepts of General Idea but also the context for the specially made works by some of the key artists working with reproduction – among them Ray Johnson, Richard Prince, Louise Lawler, Barbara Kruger, Andy Warhol and Haim Steinbach. Perhaps FILE was most interesting as an “intervention” when the whole magazine (rechristened a “megazine”) operated as a subversive graphic environment in which distinctions between “real” and parody editorial contents were hard to make. The magazine was such a skillful replica of a “regular” broadsheet, that it was sometimes mistaken for a popular magazine by newsagents.
(Salon
covers): designed by Hans-Peter Feldmann
The second title of interest is Salon. This was published by a Cologne-based artist called Gerhard Theewen. We have Theewen to thank for the term, original reproductions. Over its short life span, Salon solicited “in situ” contributions from many of the best artists of the late 70s, including Chris Burden, Lawrence Weiner, Walter Dahn. Hans-Peter Feldmann agreed to design all the covers sourcing the images from his personal collection of vernacular photography. Not all of the contents were photographic, but a good percentage of the artists’ works were because of the significance of the photograph during the late 70s and early 80s. Salon’s kitsch covers and its preference for the photographic broadcast its assault on “good taste” as a benchmark of high art.
As independents, both Salon and FILE would have considered themselves outside the machinations of the art market, even hostile towards the commodification of art.[ix] They were obviously of no interest to the validating institutions of art photography.
(Ohio issue 5, 1996),
co-edited by Uschi Huber, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Jorg Paul Janka and Stefan
Schneider. Ohio is a textless artists' magazine that recycles vernacular
images
There are many other such publications usually issued from large cities in the developed world and produced by artists as well as photographers and designers. Some of these can be found as nodes within economic networks that were created when small magazines joined together to ensure survival by exchanging information, swapping adverts and subscriber data. By reconstructing these networks of the 70s and 80s, it is possible to see that these titles are affiliated to photographers' magazines, suggesting an unexpected degree of convergence between readerships. Today, Ohio, Useful Photography and Permanent Food are examples of the phenomenon of the original reproduction.
(Image
magazine)
published by the National Film Board of Canada during the 60s and early
70s was edited by Lorraine Monk. This issue features cinematic image sequences
by Pierre Vinet and an essay by Gene Youngblood.
It is sometimes overloooked that photography was a byproduct of a technology (heliography) that was being developed in France for the printmaking trade. Photographic technology revolutionised periodical journalism and, by the 60s, the illustrated press had brought unprecedented prosperity, self-esteem and moral authority to the profession of photographer. In recent years some work has been done to acknowledge the reciprocity of print and photography. The magazine has been reappraised as a context for the work of well known photographers – Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, Bill Brandt, Diane Arbus and so on. This has involved the welcome unveiling of the editorial page – but generally we are exposed to tasteful layouts that contain the timeless “masterworks”. It cannot be a coincidence that this has gone hand in hand with the growth of the market for “vintage” press prints. Ironically perhaps, the market dictates that the most valuable ones bear the marks of handling by the unnamed picture editors and printers who once transformed them into copies.
(cover:
Andy Warhol's Interview magazine) "photo special".
Interview was affiliated with FILE
The photographic image
has long since made the shift from being based in sensitive emulsion (and
therefore limited in its portability) to being constituted in ink (and therefore
ubiquitous). It seems to me that we know and care less about ink-based “photographic
visual literature” (to adapt a term of Moholy-Nagy’s[x])
whose sole context is the circulating magazine page. After 1990, with the
widespread popularity of desktop-publishing software such as QuarkXpress,
an entire generation grew up to consider production to be reproduction.
Recently, some of the forebears of that generation of image scavengers and
manipulators – Ed Ruscha, Richard Kostelanetz and Feldmann, but also
Aby Warburg and Alexey Brodovitch – have gained recognition. I think
it is now time to reconstruct a fuller account of these sorts of intermedia
practices and their print-based products.
David Brittain is AHRB research fellow at MIRIAD, Manchester Metropolitan University. Between 1991 and 2001 he edited Creative Camera in London
[i] Pam Roberts, Alfred Stieglitz
Camera Work The Complete Illustrations 1903-1917 (Taschen 1997), p25
[ii]Walter Benjamin, "Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space its unique existence at the place where it happens to be." (The Work of Art in the Age of Photomechanical Reproduction, Illuminations, Fontana, p222)
[iii] The meaning of white space in Aperture in the 50s is put into question by Susan Sellers who argues that white space in design was at the time surrendering its avant-garde connotations due to exploitation by commercial designers and admen to symbolise sophistication. Susan Sellers, How Long Has This Been Going On? Harper’s Bazaar, Funny Face, and the Construction of the Modernist Woman (Visual Language Vol 29, No1 1995)
[iv] Christopher Phillips notes that John Szarkowski, when director of photography at MoMA, embarked on the “theoretical salvaging of photography in its entirety from the encroachments of mass culture.” (The Judgment Seat of Photography, The Contest of Meaning p 35, MIT Press,1989)
[v] Aperture’s institutional status was confirmed when John Szarkowski wrote that its founding was one of the “three most important events in American photography”. John Szarkowski, Mirrors and Windows: American Photography since 1960 (Museum of Modern Art, 1978), p 16
[vi] To be fair, such advertising has also been very hard to attract
[vii] Despite his priest-like purism, Minor White was willing to manipulate the work of other image makers, and this routinely upset core supporters. A poet before he learned photography, White introduced his texts into the flawless portfolio page, often in the form of verse, and on one at least occasion introduced different fonts to represent two “voices”. One feature intersperses photographs by a contemporary photographer with verse and pictures from the Lewis Hine archive. Although such initiatives would be rather run of the mill in any other editorial context, they were controversial in Aperture. White was effectively asserting his authorship, reducing the photograph to a mere sign and making the layout – not the absent print – the primary work.
[viii] The editors were forced to change their cover format after Time Warner sued them over breach of the LIFE copyrighted logo
[ix] An ideal art magazine is theorised by Peter Fuller as being above collusion with all the art market’s processes. Peter Fuller, Clearing a Space for Criticism, p119 (Studio International Vol 192, No 983 1976)
[x] Moholy was a major influence on Minor White’s editorship at Aperture. White’s pedagogic concept of a “creative audience”, that photographers needed to educate, is based on Moholy’s concepts of visual literacy