Exercise 3.3 'Late photography'

The exercise is in two parts: firstly, read David Campany's  essay Safety in Numbness. Summarise key points and note down my own observations; secondly look at Meyerowitz's images and compare with own memories of 9/11, noting my own response to 'late photography'.

Safety in Numbness

Campany's essay is a short well argued case considering why photography may be viewed as the prime artistic response to the aftermath of wars and disasters such as 9/11. His start point is that Meyerowitz was offered the commission of photographing Ground Zero, and that he was filmed while making his documentary stills.

Why, Campany asks, was photography given the primacy here? Why was television, video - the moving image - not used to record the scene for posterity? He notes the tendency of 'late photography' (or the trace of a trace of an event as he alternatively calls it) to be the prevalent medium in this rather special set of circumstances.

The common features are that the images frequently contain 'no people, but a lot of remnants of actvity. The medium cedes primacy of reporting of events to the moving image, but then turns up later as the 'undertaker, summariser, or accountant'.

Campany argues the still photograph in this context is a 'simple signifier of the memorable'. He could develop this further with more explicit consideration of Barthes' thesis of signifier and signified for surely what is represented is similar to what Barthes saw in his famous thesis of the black soldier on Paris Match (see previous discussion). The key difference is that Barthes argues that the signification of the black soldier was to reinforce reactionary notions of race stereotype whereas the signification of late photography is more reflective and subtle, aimed at imbuing a sense of sadness and pointlessness, almost despair at what man can do to man. Images of bombed towns in Syria are of the same genre:

Aleppo post yet another bombing campaign. The desolation is inherent in the damage and absence of people. Available  from http://www.urbanghostsmedia.com/2014/11/crumbling-bombed-ruins-aleppo-syria/. Accessed on 10 July 2016

Campany instead goes off in another direction, suggesting that the still image is somehow more memorable than a moving image; perhaps but I think there may be a more prosaic answer: a still image works precisely when there is little activity because it invokes the sense of stillness in the audience; it is a more representative of reality than a photograph of a busy street, which is no more than a freezing of what is by definition a dynamic scene. It is the same reasoning that means landscape photography 'works': the subject-matter is by definition still. And, I would add, it is QUIET. Camping neglects the aural side of video but it is key to the difference: sound is part of the experience in the present immediacy, it is less so (indeed extraneous arguably) in the contemplative aftermath.

 Company implicitly accepts this as he considers the three phases of events- before, during and after - both in the literal sense of event ordering but also the evolution of photography as a medium. Before the advent of video photography was the only method of visual recording so took primacy by virtue of this fact alone: video is of the present, photography of the aftermath: the 'still cameras  are loaded as the video cameras are packed away' in Campany's words.

And there is something more generic in this binal approach. Consider sport, for example, where 'live' sport is by definition a moving image and the experience of which is enhanced by sound, yet reports of matches contain still images.  Cinema (generically including TV and video, surely) , Campany argues, not only invented the moving image but also the 'invention of stillness as a sort of by-product'. It is surely only natural that the camera should move towards a genre that more suited stillness and lack of sound, albeit as Campany points out, that many still images are actually only ' 'frame grabs' from video. That presupposes that 'frame grab' is not photography to which I would argue, why not?

Photography is therefore less of a technological pursuit, Campany argues, than a cultural pursuit. 'Photography is what we do with it'. Late photography has a distinctness from other media - it is a very photographic form of photography. And, I would add, so is landscape photography. Perhaps Campany is saying no more than that late photography is a response of the practice to other media challenges: retreat to that at which you are best equipped.

He concludes by pointing out the danger of an aetheticized response when viewing photographs: mourning by association that mitigates against social or political will by flattering the viewer's ideological paralysis. In simpler terms, we have done our bit by looking at the pictures. Maybe, but one must consider what other responses there might be; one has only to think of teenagers leaving the UK to operate with IS to realise that ideological paralysis may not be such a bad thing. We cannot all be activists for all campaigns.

Meyerowitz: Aftermath: World Trade Center Archive (2006)

The four images below give a flavour of Meyerowitz's work on the World Trade Center:

How do these images differ from my own memories of the event? Probably more because they are the 'Aftermath' rather then anything in principle. I certainly recall images such as the one below of rubble with merely iconic parts of the structures remaining:

Available from http://www.reuters.com/news/picture/9-11-iconic-images?articleId=USRTR2QTU4. Accessed 10 July 2016

But inevitably the late photography does not address the immediate human tragedy, captured by images such as the one below:

Available from http://www.reuters.com/news/picture/9-11-iconic-images?articleId=USRTR2QTU4. Accessed 10 July 2016

Photography also seeks not to address the wider issues of how and why the attack occurred; I recall being mesmerised by the sheer audacity of the attack; how terrorists learnt to fly and hijacked the aircraft. Also absent is the related attack on the Pentagon, and the crash of one aeroplane in a field after, reportedly, passengers attacked the terrorists on board. It is important to see photography of events as a part of a multimedia experience where the moving image and written word also have a large part to play.

But news is news. Even an event as significant as 9/11 disappears from our front pages and TV screens relatively quickly; there is an airing every now and again on anniversaries but life for the vast majority moves on. This is the value of projects such as Meyerowitz: they aid reflection, deepen the sense of tragedy and loss, and emphasise the desolation. I think as well the photographs add a time dimension lost by the immediacy of other media. Much is made of the emergency services (and many New York firefighters lost their lives in 9/11) but theirs is an instant response; within hours, days at the most, they are gone, to be replaced by those clearing up, in this case replacing the Twin Towers with Ground Zero. The second image emphasises this in particular reminding us that the clear up was a 24 hour response for many months afterwards.

Aside from presenting the enormity of the task, and the desolation, Meyerowitz uses icons to present defiance and hope: the flag on the building in the first building, and the implied line of the gaze of the construction worker to the lag atop a relic in the third. These are examples in my view of the value of late photography: it helps us recall in times of ever more and ever speedier responses to news events that there are many unwritten experiences those who remain, whether victims or, as in this case, property.

There is a danger, though, of late photogpraphy becoming a genre - a template that is used in many similar situations. The image of Aleppo has much in common with those of Ground Zero but the story behind is very different: a civil war lasting years as opposed to a terrorist attack lasting a few hours, and, one might add, one that is ongoing with little cause for optimism as this is written in July 2016. Rahter like sunsets over rocky coasts, or shipwrecks there is something seductively photogenic about post disaster scenery. Campany concludes similarly when he says that late photogpraphy is a 'very photographic form of photography'. It is what the medium is good at so we seek to provide it to the audience without, if we are not careful, of adding the context.