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As I began the process of assembting start points for this essay I wasstruck by what Linda NochLin had said in her articLe, 'Some WomenReaLists in 1974, about the photoreaList work of Vija CeLmins and SylviaPLimack MangoLd.

'... the very mode of approach - port by port, methodicol, o little sta time, like folding the loundrg, like knitting, like cleaning o floor uery,very corefully... hos its r00ts in o sociol reality.'1

I thought about the act of copying from photos in this way; a boringtask, Like cLeaning or dusting, where every surface has to be attended to

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but Left unattered, Leaving no trace. cleaning is a thankless task andwhen done main[y taken for granted. NochLin's connections betweengendered labour and art production make visibLe an activity which isreLenttess[y invisible, by an art form which references a medium knownfor its transparency.

Lucy Lippard poLiticised this a rittte further in'HousehoLd rmages inArt', to suggest that when domestic objects became part of the new popArt vernacular a kind of appropriation took pLace: 'lf the first mojor poportists hod been women - the movement might never houe gotten out 0fthe kitchen'.2 she angriLy denounces an art world which cannot take worr^1srr,,art seriousLy, but can hail BriLLo pad boxes and huge ironing boards as arevoIution in modern subject matter when presented by maLe artists.

I imagined this present essay wourd take me through an anaLysis ofwomen photoreaIists, buiLding an argument on doing the dusting; photopainting considered as a performance of a kind of passive servitude.3In this performance the traditional hierarchy between painting andphotography is reversed; painting becomes the humble handmaiden ofphotography and is made faithfut[y, slavishLy, to reproduce it. There isbLack comedy here as weLL as a very reaL aspect of strangeness. Somehowthe painter is turned into a victim, as if the photograph is in a positionof power, and demands these acts of homage; as if photoreaLism is doneto the painter, rather than the other way around.

obviousLy this servltude by the artist is conscious and wilful; an aestheticchoice that has to be seen in the context of other kinds of art disciplines.The simiLarity to domestic Labour and to women's servitude then is notsimp[y anaLogous, but rather more curious. The relationship of simiLaritybetween the slow copying of a photograph by a painter, and the slow processof menialwork is an entirely contrived and poetic one. lt is preciseLy thispoetics of servltude that has become the motivating puzzle of this essay.

Given that our initiaI research into photoreaLism has unearthed a realscarcity of women photo painters, and definite cLusters of white maLe photopainters, it has been necessary to suspend Lines of enquiry which tend tolink this art to 'sociaI reaLity', in the seductive way that Nochtin hints at.lnstead we are left to wonder at the reLationship between psychic reaLityand aesthetics. Who wants to be a servant? who wiLtingLy submits to sLowpainstaking work? Grven the rather scanda[ous nature of such desires, andgiven that photo painting speaks, at least superficiaLLy, of passive sLaveryunder the order of a strict opticaL regime and a ruthless machined finish,it is perhaps fortunate that the artists coL[ected for incLusio n in postcardson Photographyjust happen to be men.

The characteristics of masochism were a compound problem for Freudbecause of their compLex reLationship with the death drive.4 Freud identifiedtwo types of masochism: feminine and moraL. Feminine masochism isa misleading term, real[y to be read as anticipated pleasure in passivity,rather than anything to do with being femaLe. This is the aspect ofmasochism lshatL be considering in terms of photo paintinq. The other

kind, morat masochism, is in many ways cLoser to Freud's initiat thoughts

on masochism being a variety of sadism. Here the subject turns on itself

and 'seLf punishment' predominates, as in retigious seLf f LageLLation. The

drama is between the ego and the super ego, and each time the ego is

ravaged, often for nothing more than having had a tempting thought. ln

contrast, feminine masochism is about deveLoping a rich, sensua[, fantasy

wortd of utter subordination to an externaland often specificaL[y constructed

cold and crue[ 'mistress .

ln connection with witling servitude as symptom, lwitt be considering

Gi|.Les Deteuze's essay on masochism: "Co[dness and Cruetty", in which

he anatyses the Literary wortd of Leopotd Von Sacher-Masoch.5 But first

I am going on a rather Long diversion, to touch on the torturous history

of art photography and reproduction, to consider copying and the

production of copies in a compLex history.

Art photographsEdward Steichen's seLf portrait ltig.29) is, in his words, 'photography's answer

Io Man with a GLove', a portrait painted by Titian c.1523.6 Steichen s gum

bichromate print is an image full of contradiction, and comes at a time of

intense struggle for the identity of art photography. Peter Henry Emerson,

a fierce advocate of naturatistic photography and a great proctaimer of

photography's pLace in the expressive arts, had, in 1891, pubLished a sma[[

pamphLet to renounce his own ideas as utterly unfounded, after concurring

with new scientific evidence that the tonaI quatity of a photograph was

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determined by chemicaL reaction, not artistic witL. AIL claims for personalvision shaLL be renounced and the medium of photography shal.L beconsidered onLy as a humb[e aide to the arts!7 Partly in response to thisdramatic and pubLic turnaround by Emerson, the pictoriaL photographygroups in Europe began to organise and defend their work. They brokeaway from the sweLting ranks of the photo clubs and societies and formedselective secessionist encLaves, promoting aesthetic appreciation anddiscernment. They aspired to the status of artist and poet, and they wish."6their work to be seen in art gaLLeries. Steichen's self portrait in part beton^"to this cuLtural campaign to promote photography as art. At the same timJ

7 Peter Henrg Emerson "The Deorh of Norurolsric the work manages to say a huge amount about thePhotogrophy".1891. Also ourhor of N0ruro,isric conf usion between these terms. Steichen representsPhotography for students of the Art",1888. See himself to us as a painter, in a manner which looksNoncy Neuhott. "PH. Emerson". 1978, and pam timeLess, using a surface technique epitomisingRoberts in the inrroducrion ro "Comero Work a hand_made style. There is an attempt to coL[apse

:'::ffi?I'r:}:','l"T^;,!'i|lii,;,li?i, the d,istinction between photosraphy and paintins"Photogrdpha in rhe Mgdern tro: ,iija ru by adopting the Look of the sublective painted mark.Chris Phil,ips, MoMAlAperture. 1989, ond There is a simpLe dream Logic here; if photography canPoul strond, 'Photographg', in "comera work", Look tike painting and is made by an artist then suretyno 49150. 1917, teprinted in "clossic Essogs on it must be approaching equivaLence with painting, andPhotography" edited bv A.Trdchtenburg. Leete couLd aLmost be substituted for painting, or at leastlslond Books 1980

stand next to it. lt hardly needs to be sard that thisaspiration for high culturaLstatus comes at an extraordinary moment in thepopularisation of photography. Steichen appeals to a compressed notion ofart, seLf expression and culturaLvaLue, at a time of fundamentaL upheavaIin these very notions.

The romance and nostalgia of pictoriaLism gets a sharp dismissalwhenthe new' photography asserts its purity and objectivity by the Late 1g10s,and early 1p2Os. Photographers as disparate as PauI Sirand in the USA,or Albert Renger-Patzsch in Germany went out of their way to distancethemselves from this hand-made wishy-washyness, which they wrote aboutas if it were an aberration, a disgusting contamination of the medium itse[f.This revutsion at the aspiration of the pictorialist, 'the impotent desire topaint', as Strand calls it, perhaps informs the cLean modernist purity wenow know as modern art photography.B The f.6{ group for instance, involvingEdward Weston and AnseIAdams, with its rigorous attention to the truthof the photographic vision, and, by extension, the institution of a separatebut equaL poLicy of difference between f ine art photography and modernart practice, reveaLs, to a certain extent, a cLarity born of defence.

It is perhaps not untiL the 1960s that the obdurate defensiveness of artphotography in the USA is equaLLed by a radicaL retreat from the modernart gaLLery by young american artists. As a reaction against high modernistabstraction, artists began to Look outside the art gat[ery-world, to pick upand reuse traces of everyday Life. As has been much discussed, radical artfrom the 1960s in some ways reruns strategies of ihe European anti-artavant garde of the 1910s, 1g2os and 1930s, of Dada and SurreaLism. Both

these qroupings ceLebrated the everyday, the banal., the overLooked, the

mass produced, which then became introduced and reproduced as objects

in the work. lt was a purposeful break: an attack on the notion of art as

refined, traditionaLand in good taste. Both Dada and then Surreal.ism wanted

to bring the sociaL, the poLiticaLand the obscene into view; their intention

was to Let it shock the rarefied bourgeois world.Some have argued that the neo avant garde of American Pop Art, was

not a criticaLavant garde as it simp[y copied earLier formaLaspects without

ever threatening the art estabLishment s world view.9 This period of American

art is worth noting here as it Locates a transitlon, in, if nothing else, what

we end up seeing in mainstream modern art gaLLeries across the gLobe We

can now put absoLuteLy anything in the art gaLLery. Not so the photography

gaLLery, which, untiL recently, remained faithfuL, not onLy to the medium and

techniques of optics and wet chemicaLs, but strangely enough io an

unwritten Law of what constitutes a 'good picture. Hence the rather odd

articLes in photo magazines over the years about whether Cindy Sherman

is a photographer, and, if she is, then is she a good photographer?10

More recentLy, in a seminar with photography students, I showed

photographic work by Richard BiL[ingham and Gi[Lian Wearing and the

response was dismay:'Who Let them take such bad pictures?'they asked.

You couLd argue that these students were out of touch, and had not been

Looking ai the sty[e magazines, where'bad'photography has been in vogue

for some years. Bui actuaL[y I think these students weTe on a totaLly different

track; they were trying to distinguish art from commerce, or art photography

from the everyday ubiquitous presence of stylish photographic reproduction.

The stranqeness of this adherence to quaLity, of course, is that it was the

emergence of photography in the nineteenth century which destabilised the

priority of attention to skiLLin painting a crisls which enabLed the phenomenon

of modern art - an ideas based practice out of an ideas-in-skill. practice.

It is precisely this defence against, and poLiticaIscepticism of, the

spaces of modern art that lnow move on to consider, with reference to an

earfy Light box transparency by Jeff Wall, DoubLe Self Portrart,1979 [fiS. 3O].

WhiLst WaLL does show in art gaLLeries, I thlnk this piece in particuLar is

marked by the anxiety of being, of participating in a space of priviLeged

eLitism, and wondering if this excLusive zone can in any way act as a self

criticaL, seLf reflexive space. lf 'anything'can be put in an art galLery, does

that incLude the abstract phiLosophicaL notion of contradiction, or wilL that

simpLy be subsumed by the generaL conservative p[uraLity of the ga|.Lery

space? We enter the work on the basis of,the founding principle of the

doubLe, which I see as a figure of doubt and anxiety. lnteresting, then,

that this very figment aLso describes the probLem of photography in reLation

to its status as art: the ease with which photography reproduces itseLf, its

doubLing as founding mode, as nature. How can uniqueness and high valtre

withstand the presence of indistinguishabLe copies?

There are two men in a bare room, their attention has been taken by a

ihird presence out in front. Nothing much is happening, yet there is tension

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and a hint of coercion. Both men Look wary, keeping their caLm as they try towork out how to exit from the room backwards. The unseen presence couldbe anything:a wiLd animaL, a rogue bandit, an ex-girlfriend wantrng a chat.Whateverwas here has gone, leaving these two frozen in its wake. Asviewers we take up the place of that which was here before us and we arelocked into a geometry of its power. We Look at the work, and it Looks backat us: couLd this image be a bLind reflection of our activity of Looking, ordid we just get in the way?

The two men, two moments, two poses of the same man, Look outbeyond us towards the camera; their eyes' point to demarcate the triang[eof our looking, lust as the camera points back to the space of their standing.This overlay of figuration and physics seems to [eave no space to chance.The picture plane has vanished; we occupy a space prefigured by thepicture's projection. lf Renaissance perspective ideaLised the picture pLaneas transparent, then here WaLl's attention to scaLe and gaze cominq fromthe work somehow dispenses with it.rl

For light sensitive materiaLs, transparence is not just an idea, it is aLsoa fraqile materiaLfact between the lens and the scene. Had we walked olset when this picture was taken, we viewers, trapped in the contingent spacebetween lens and scene, wouLd be recorded as huge giants, doubLe or tripLeLife size, out of focus.

Here is a photographic document of exactly what passed before the Lens.At the same time it contradicts our common sense grasp of reaLity. Whatconnects the impossibilities of Double SeLf Portrait? ls it WaLL's doubLedpresence, doubled with ours, his doubtless presence as fiction, both naturaLimage, and supernaturaL phantom, our consciousness of being outsidethe picture and yet within its projection, or the rhetoric of constancy andrepetltion in difference - the defensive, hostiLe, scepticaL, Locked-inexpressions affecting us both sides of the picture? Perhaps it is justthe doubleness of everything.

Some hundred years earlier, but working in a striking[y similar wayto -leff WaLl, 0scar Rejlander It8t3-rB75J, found the penalties for pursuingphotography as art were high. Rejlander was trained as a painter andcame to photography quite Late in life. He invented a multipLe negativecompositron process, whiLe working on a Large compLex photo work IheTwo Ways of Life,1B57, an alLegoricaltableau, composed of many figuresand many negatives, acting out the consequences of moraL and ethicalchoices in Life. By choosing to pursue the highest academic genreof painting by photographic means he flew into a fierce battLe raging overthe inclusion of photography within the ranks of the fine arts. He wasahead of his time, but such was the opposition to his ideas that he endedhis fife poor and unce[ebrated. The image, ReTlander the Artrst introducingRejLander the VoLunteer Ifig 311, describes the struggle, as he saw it, for artand photography.

There are two men in a room addressing a third presence out in frontof the picture. 0ne of the figures is standinq in front of an ease[. le has

a wide-brimmed hat and veLvet coat on, and performs a courteous greeting _

one hand on heart, the other gesturing back to his colleague. He Looks oltlat us, wistfuLLy impLoring. Behind him stands the more upright and bolshy'voLunteer', dressed for miLitary service, resting one hand on an upturns6musket. He is standing strong and firm with his futl face towards us; [15are soLemn though rendered somewhat emphatic as they rove towards t6lyesfirst figure. The soLdier's gaze seems to add a comic element to the firstfiqure's poLite reverence, and now he Looks sLightLy less than dignified. {g3'n,this is a doubLe seLf portrait. RelLander is pLaying two parts: the artist/ p6s1

and the soldier ready to volunteer in the fight for the recognition ofphoiography as an art. In contrast to the Steichen self portrait, Rejlanderas artist is an unselfconscious depiction, rather uncontrived. These are thecLothes that RejLander normaLLy wears, and his easeL in his studio is probabty

there by accident as much as design. ln thls doubLe seLf portrait it is themiLitary man who is cLothed metaphoricaLly. Surely Rejlander couLd not,even in his wildest dreams, have knowinq[y seen such a future for theideoLogicaL apparatus of photography?

On the easeI behind RejLander the artist, is a partiaLLy obscured pictureof Ginx's Babyltig.32l which Rejlander made as an expression of 'Mental

Distress'for Charles Daiwin's book Ihe Expression of the Emotions in Man

and AnimaLs, pubLished tn 1872. Darwin's book was one of the f irst scientificpubLications to use photographic ilLustrations as empiricaIevidence andflgurative description. Darwin was interested in arresting the fleeting and

transitory expressions of the face and body and reLating them to a materiatistaccount of the emotions. Photography, in pariicuLar, was a highLy prized

method of demonstration for these arguments. However, there weretechnicaLdifflcuLties involved in coLLecting images of fleeting pLasticity.

There were no instantaneous photographs as yet: even in good Light and

on a smal|. pLate, exposure time was between three and ten seconds - too

Long to catch a changing expression with any cLarity. Guillaume BenjaminDuc^enne de Boulogne. a Irench neu.oLogist, who had pubLished Mecanisne

de la Physionamie Humaine ten years earlier tn 1862, surmounted theprobLem of movement by galvanising his subjects - attaching eLectrodes

to a patient to isoLate particuLar sets of muscLes. The current wouLd be

switched on and the face wouLd be'frozen' in a set expression for the

time needed to make the exposure...The capturing of movement was one technicaLchaL[enge for Darwin's

prolect and the other was how to reproduce the images in a pubLication'

Duchenne's work had been published as photographs in an aLbum, which

of course meant a Limited edition and an expensive product.Darwin had a different approach to the Laboratory scientrst; his technique

was that of an enthusiastic coLLector, as it always had been, and his visron

tor the book mainLy consisted of finding an economicaL method to reproduce

photographs so his pubLisher wouLd agree to the pubLication.l2In his search for photographs and new photo reproduction technoLo9Y

Darwin came across Oscar RejLander who had set up as a high street

studro photographer near London's Victoria Station. Rejtander producedmany photographs of the emotions for Darwin, sometimes working onspecific requests, sometimes inventinq his own.

The most famous of RelLander's iLLustrations for The Expressionbecame known as Ginx's Baby, named by an enthusiastic reviewerafter an abandoned child in a popuLar noveL. Ginx's Baby is reproducedin The Expression as a heLiotype plate with five other photographs ofchildren cryrng Ifig. 33).

The image became an instant success and was haiLed as the first truLyinstantaneous photograph of movement. RejLander soLd countLess copiesof it, both as a smalL carte-de visite, and as a Larger print. Recent researchhas shown that this famous'frozen'momeni is not photoqraphic at alL buta drawing of a photograph (fig.321.13 By hand copying this image onto

69 32

Oscar Gustar e Re,]lander'

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increase the information and then rephotograph

it at a slightly Larger size, to blend in with the

other images.14

Darwin cou[d have given the sLightly bLurred,

smal'L photograph to the copyist and had a wood

cut made of it, But his desire was for the chiLd to

have been'seen'by a camera, and in the text he

refers to the picture as an exceLLent photograph'

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n'noil.'-i) in, nrsr editron of The Expression about scientific method and visuaL proof, butt^i,loiliri

r"rr z00o copies: ,1, h,""lf: ::TL'.ly raLher the asp rar,on fo. rhe rse of phoLog'aohy tr^at

fr 'j'.,., lrliinl*:'';ffi il: ff :.,; ; i:i, *:d,il Hilnr I xi :;:t:11.';;; ,;r, duroble ond hod to be reneued of the technicaL possibilities of the time.15

Irrrg prar,,im I rhrnk rhot Reilonder swopped ReiLanoer and Darwin ca. be situated at the

}iiffiT,T,,|i;;Jhi.:#[ffi:Tfl.i],'lilJ, r, threshoLd of a pr ntins expLos o' rr ,s the'r comb'ned

,ou, whor rhe orisinot ptoros.pl jr;tra iit, fantasy of photography which motivaies this leap lnto

rDroduced 0r rhe p0ge the future, but Rejlander's old fashioned training as

;;i;;fu oruisibiliru ror rhe emotions of course an academic painter whrch makes it possible. He knows

II

misses the cruciol non oppeotonce of certoin

smotions, ot rhe non uisuol force of the €motions

ruhich Freud ond Breurer [ould deuote their

ottentions to some Ueors loter, in the deuelopment

of psUchoonolUsis16 The drouing of Ginx's Boby (fil.32), Wintedir our text os o third generotion copu, 0 slide,

o scon, o holf rone plote to ink dot picture, is.

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dlA. Emoiions in MonondAh,moir,

rg72, plate r,Ketail) photograph of"tnrs Bob-} by Oscar Custave(ejlander.

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size)

how to copy. He was abLe to make a cont6 drawing

which looked Like a PhotograPh.l6

Copyinglf RejLander is perched at the threshoLd of modern

l,Tll,lllJ.,il;lj:lT',I ffifffll'i'ilo,]i.,,,, pn:" ::l':d:-'l'l !::^:?l:'::::l:,',::^::l::YliiJll;llll,l,jxlT:fi:|"'iffiffie;,ffil]#il as he fiLrs in for the absent but imasined

l.-.lio^l.gl,technologu to ochieue his'photogrophic' effect He could be accused of making an inauthentic copy'r'.lonothon croru "Techniques oithe obseruer", 1990 of faLsifying a photographic record. CertainLy he is

implicated and entwtned in the process of print production' but it seems

that his invoLvement here is benlgn and compensatory' heLping out when

photography is flawed and reprographics bLuni and blind ln this way

i.,1i. inrioLu"..nt is famiLiar and contemporary. But what about his copying:

is it a cLassical or a modern practice?

lnTechniquesoftheObse:rver,lTJonathanCrarysuggeststhatmodernitymarks the subject by the way that she/he sees: untiL the turn of the

nineteenthCentury,visionwasdescribedandunderstoodintermsofoptics-thevisibLeisregisteredbytheeyewhichtakesinanimageofthewor[dinthesameWayacameraobscuratakesinanobjectiveref|ectronoftheexterior. From the EnLightenment untilthe earl'y years of the nineteenth

century the camera obscura can be seen as a figure of discourse that.can

standinfortheobservinghumansublectThen,Craryargues'theopticaLgeometry connecting the subject to the objective world of knowledge is

79

{rg. 35

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8omm x 22ommr$2!. From Monuol

of Meastremenl

destabiLised by modernity; the lived experiences of industriaLisation and

the new science of physiology begin to put in p[ace a'body'of the observs,.

who no Longer paraLLeLs the empty dark room of a camera obscura Counter

to the transparent system which can descrlbe the cLassicaL observer, Crary

outIined a modernisation of vision, LiteraLLy as a cLouding that takes pLace

Modern thought and vision can no Longer be considered timeless and

objective but emerge as temporary and subjective sensations, as nervous

energy coursing through the liquid, transLucent opacity of the body

A project for Ihe' modernised' observer interested in this history of vision,

is to attempt to reconstruct the conditions of cLassicaL observation, and

assume the vision of a camera obscura. You are famiLiar with the weLL

known wood cut by Albrechi Durer, of a draughtsman pLotting a recLining

woman lfig. 35). The drawing is meant as a technicaLieaching aide. I have

set up simiLar scenarios for teaching in which a student is pLaced behind

a perspex grid and attempts to plot the scene in froni. Every gLance through

the grid must be trained on a vanishing point, and must repeated[y strike

the scene and the grid in the same manner. lt helps to al[ but bLindfo[d the

student and to restrain their mobiLity, particuLarly in the head and neck

area. Harsh discipLine for the modern student. The exercise is frustrattng

for the untrained eye and often ends abruptLy: the student strains to see

around the lLittLe eye ho[e, to crane his/her neck to see past the grid' gets

a dizzy, zooming sensation as their aitention switches from grid to scene

The image cannot be transposed with any easy or automatic coheTence'

because the image does not exist; each gLance is momentary and sLips awaY'

You never seem to be abLe to get into quite the same viewing position twtce'

the marks swim around in non correspondence. You give up'

Can we consider RejLander copying Ginx's Baby,in th]:,way::1it"'.'n"-practised act of c|.assicaLobservation? I don't think so When Re]Lan0er ",

from the photograph ol the crying chiLd he did reLy on his technicaLtrllnO

but in a different exercise to the one mentioned aboue Ht did not atternPt

to see as rIhe were Lhe tens oIu..,.n.r.. R"jt.";;;'."plel'ir,e-pt-,otoaralhof the chiLd as he wou|.d have drawn from any other image, in a tradrttot''

way, transposing one flat surface to another. lt is a technicaL matter 0I

fis,.36-38

O"r.r. Gu"t'' " Re.1lcnder

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bPresion ollhc Enoton' tn

llanond Ant'nal'. t872

lndignotion

picking up and putting down already fLat marks. 0nly when alL these marks

are reassembLed and Looked at together does a coherent illusion re-form.

This surface to surface transcribing,fiork now done mainLy by machines,

is a centraLtechnique of mass modernity, yet it is buiLt on an ancient

system of repLication. WhiLe making a drawing which Looked photographic,

Rejlander's technique was pre-photographic, but in a mode that does not

correspond to the'cLassical'as Crary descibes it.

Rej[ander's activity does have 'modern' aspects aLready mentioned: his

aspiration for total visuaLiiy and the generaLway he compensates for fauLty

technoLogy. ln addition, his body is'put to work' by the technique he empLoys

this'thickness' of the body, as Crary caLLs it, is used to hoLd the visuaL

information temporarily and in bits, in order to reproduce it. But reaLLy his

practice of copying is neither cLassical nor modern, and perhaps suggests

that this dedicated practice of Looking and assimiLating resists Crary's

account of modernisation, because copying is as oLd as cuLture.

Painting photographs'ln uieu 0f fhis neor identit| between pointing ond photogrnphg, between

the thing depicted ond the depiction, o question intrudes itself. lsn't this

sll o briltiont uoste 0f effort? Whg this uirtuoso detour, using the meons

of painting to moke o photogroph, this reconuersion of the mechonicol

into the manusl?'1g

At this stage l'd like to return to a discussion of contemporary painting

works which Look photographic, but are, in fact, hand made. Here I am

interested in work which iakes the photograph as its sub.lect matter, and

copies it, in a way simi[ar to RejLander in the case of Ginx's Baby, but with

less of a binding and reasonabLe excuse.l9 Why this virtuoso detour?'

Consider a piece like 5til1 Life (5naiL an Blackberries),t996'(page xxvi),

by Mark Fairnington. The painting is a copy of a coLour reproduction from

an iLLustrated book. The scope for invention in the production of this work

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is reduced to an initiaL matter of scale, procedure and materiaLs. Theprocess of making, whiLe skilled, is cLoser in some ways to reading a booft

or studying than it is to making new'work. In fact the work is not'new'i1various ways. Artists have aLways copied photographs, and, more recentlv

artists as disparate as Richter, Morley and CLose, together with those loos,^ty

grouped around photorealism in the 1970s, made work which hovered arou16

a copy of a photograph. In yet more ways this StiLL Life is not new in thatit doesn't Look or feel new: like a hand made jumper, it has been a Long tirngcoming; it is sig'ned aLL over by having been made: it is never successfuLLy

separated from its production; it an an object whose makinghas not been erased from memory.

Copying a photograph by hand in order to produce a precise version

of it requires dexterity and restraint; it is a discip[ine of patient looking and

transcribing, painting from the position of the viewer at the expense of thetraditionaLfreedoms of the maker. And yet the work is enthraLLing and

compeLLing to Look at in a way the originaI photograph is not. There is a twisthere, a twist that can be read as a sLippage. Remember how easiLy Roland

Barthes'text'Death of the Author', became a klnd of sLogan of radicaL artand art theory - somehowwithout noticing it a switch took pLace fromliterary theory about reading, writing and criticism, to a denunciation of the

artist in favour of the viewer. To quote HaL Foster in The Return of the Rea[,

discussing Robert Morris "... it is o 'deoth 0f the outhor'Ias Roland Barthes

wouLd cafl it in tg68l, thot is ot the sorne time o birth of the uiewer".2a

The article by Barthes actually ends like this, 'the birth of the reoder must

be ot the cost of the death of the Author'. That is Author, capitaL 'A'. C[early,

the practice of reading and that of writing intermingLe and do not canceL

each other out; one couLd hardLy exist without the other. To break into this

0edipaL chasm it is onLy necessary to point to the continuities before and

after the supposed death takes place. Barthes is referring to a shift in

criticism away from the fixture of meaning as a function of the author,away from considering the Author as the centraL hero of the aestheticactivity. The,Author is disLodged by new criticism, which of course is at the

same time new writers, who become authors. How does this work in reLation

to artist and viewer? The artist is by necessity aLso a viewer, and the two

functions and activities are not necessariLy set to annihiLate each other.

ln fact, perhaps we coul.d simpLy say in terms of new art criticism that the

artist is born a viewer, and stays one. This sLippage, from reader to viewer'

author and artist, took pLace partLy because of the excitement in art theorY

and postmodernism to do with considering the art work, or any visuaL

materiaL, as a text, to be read in a semiotic continuum.WhiLst it is reLativeLy easy to discuss images in words, and consider the

codes and conventions at work, that is, to write or speak about the image' '

this does not make the image into a text, except temporariLy. The image a.s

text continuaLLy changes, while the image as image stays put. The image ts^,

not hetd to what it is o'by difference, convention and usage, as is the radtt''

suggestion of semiotics. The image is not in the first instance made uP 0l

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arbitrary signifiers, Like Language, because it resembLes what it is of. Thisresemblance is most acute in the case of photography where there is Likeness

on top of the physicaL refLection caused by the Light coming off the object andinto the Lens. Photography as Barthes writes at the end of 'Rhetoric of thelmage', has a seeming naturaLness about it. lt is preciseLy this everydaynaturaL resembLance that Barthes is keen to stress as the 'rhetoric' of thephotographic image. The seeming naturaLness of photography is cu[turaL,

and for Barthes the culturaL is the transformation of the unfixed natureof the world and signification to the ideologicalsafety of common sense.

I think it is preciseLy this quaLiiy of resemblance and apparent neutraLity

that the photo painter is caught by.

Both 'Death of the Author'and 'The Rhetoric of the lmage 2l have

been centraLtexts in criticaLart practice for some time. I feeL it a[mostnecessary to apologise for dragging out and trotting through such weLL

trodden ideas that have been 'not new'for such a time. I partLy repeatthese themes now because of the way contemporary photo painting wants

to repeat; it aLmost prides itseLf on'not being new'. lt is not work thatseeks out noveLty, rather it dweLLs in

the 'aLready known, and rehearsesthemes that have themselves entered intocommon sense.

Perhaps then we couLd read a photopainting by Fairnington as work by an

artist who has heard aLL about the

consequences of postmodernism, the death

of the artist, the death of painting, and has incorporated the gist of theseideas in a particular way, that is he has accommodated the more threateningsuggestions by acting as if they were LiteraLLy true. Fairnington takes the role

of the victim of new criticism. This is an artist who is'pLaying dead. And he makes his paintings pLay along. His productionof work impLies careful Looking and restrained mark making Leading

one to beLieve that this artist has ihoroughLy submitted to the rule of theaLready said, the aLready reproduced. And yet, there is of course this twist;his beautifully executed copies present an intoxicatingLy vivid surface thatseems to speak, as Michael BaxandaLL says of the French eighteenth centurypainter Jean Baptiste Sim6on Chardin, Like an essayist in mid fLow on thesubjeci of vision.22

When we Look at StiLl Life ISnaiL on Blackberries) lfig 391, it is easy toget stuck, to feeL swallowed up. The surface appears as a chiming set ofrefLections, but soon they detach themselves and hover as the surfacereLinquishes its ho|.d on the picture to Let onto a snaiL, sheLL, pattern, depth,bLur. The presence of photography reproduced is Levered open Like a tomb:you can slip into its never ending moment, obLivious, compressed, euphoric.

WhiLe the painting can be said to be finished before it has begun withthe act of deciding what to copy, so this time of Looking, of making, Lets onto

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unsupervised time the detightfuLfreedom of an expanded frozen mornert

turned bit by bit into a tab[eau vivant.

on one hand we couLd account for the accentuated gLow of the painted

photograph simpLy in terms of nostaLgia;the heroic ma[e painter is gone 3n6

aLL thal remains for him to do now is copy from the automated spectacle.

His skilL and vision are rendered redundant - his mascuLinity and tradition6l

]tabour, his revered status, gone down the drain of shabby consumerism'

The added visual richness of a painted photograph can be seen as a smoks

srgnaLfor son e kind of mourning.

However, this practlce of sLow copying is aLso a process of transformation

from a photographic reality to a patnterly one. That is a change of registers

and a change of sign systems. WhiLst the process seems sLavish and

submissive, it a[so rather sLyLy arranges a substitution. WhiLe the photograph

is known partly as a witness, for having been there at the scene, ihe painting

is more of a story form, a way of re-teLLing. This conveTsion from an index of

actuaLity to a bLank canvas awaiting inscription suggests that the Lost pLace

of the maLe artist is not simply mourned; rather it is being acted out and

re-totd, re-presented. What seems to be a Lament is aLso a wiLfu|.Ly contrived

enactment of bondage. lf we turn to Deleuze to consider the puzz|.e of why

the subject puts himseLf in such a downtrodden place, we wiL|! find an

account at odds with the Freudian picture;'The mosochist fleels guilty, he osks to be beaten, he expiates' but whg

ond for what crime? ls it not preciselg the fother imoge in him thot is

minioturised, beaten, ridiculed ond humiligted? Whot the subject otones for

is his resembl once to the fother, ond the fother's likeness in him; the formulo

0f mosochisrn is the humilioted fother. Hence the fother is not s0 much the

beoter os the beoten.'zs

WhiLstforFreudthebeatingfantasyisasexuaLisedpunishmentinwhich the subject is beaten by the father for his own erotic attachment

to the father, for DeLeuze the subject arranges to be beaten so to thrash the

father, to disavow the power of the father by acting out his utter submission'

ln this way the photo painter puts in pLace a slavish re[ation with the

photograph in order to have communion with and to represent the paternaI

signifr"er, the tradition of painting, and to humrtiate it by giving it no place

except as aLready finished, as aLieady insignificant, t' no Longtr^ supremely

and uniqueLy cuLtural, as anything but potent The photo painter constructs

a painfuIcontract with the photograph, in order to experience every,paintertY

moment as a bLissfuI form of submission in which the law of the father

is suspended.To esteem or worship the machine reproduction in thrs way is cLear,Ly not

the wish to become it; this enhanced mimicry is ansofutety nlt un ur.nO't'out

refLection tike Steichen's SeLf Portrait, achieving status by proxy24 Rather

there is something going on here in the very pr-oduction of a Likeness that

is the visuaI equivaLent of a diversion, a delay, and a form of consumpti0n;

a burning or gLowing, [ike a condemned man's [ast cigarette . 1- tnTo quote DeLeuze again, 'The function of the mosochistic controct ls tu

inuesf the mr,trier image with the symbolic power of the lsw'.25 n otherwords, to refuse the symboLic power of ihe law, the Law of the father,and to insist that the powerfuL mother has you compLetety underher thumb.

ln The lnterpretation of Dreams, Freud comes acToss a strangephenomenon of desire and representation in the unconscious.26 ln the

dream wish there is no easy rhetoricaLor visuaLequivaLent of negation,of N0, or N0T in dream imagery. Negation is therefore absoLutely'in'thedream wish but not representabLe as part of it. Freud suggests that'nohas to be impLied, by various means such as contradiction, and emphasis.He Likens this to the absence in primitive auraL-based Languages of any

phonetic eLement to indicate a negation. Words suchas neaT' and 'far' wouLd be the same word, enunciated

luinting ot oll, ,n foct rt is distinctlu different in with different emphasis. lf we see photo painting inopptooch liti.on ts coreful tutth-hts brushstrokes this way, as a k nd of g,owing hattucination, a dreamuhich ore ,nlu there to reueol feotures.flourlessly

version of a photograph, an ioeaL saIion, then perhapsHe lights neorly oll his portroits in the some

nonner: evenll, ond in no u,oy lxouJd olloru for We COULd Say that this work is not made in mOUrning

,,hrdrroprroronu of the subiect into shodot!. for the lost place of the maL'e painter at aLL, but is

,r Steichen's "Self Portroit"' ofter Tition's "Mon

u,ith 0 GI0ue", does not octuol'U resemble thot

lncidentollg, most of Tition's portroits ore of

oristoffots, potlons, ond 0rtists. ond he wosrather a dectaration of independence from the regimeof sexuaLdifference which paternaLises such Legacies,

same time a demonstration of the worst kind of

Iroun for pointing importont people,,not just and a humiliation of painterty tradition to boot.

'the grocer' or 'the tuosher u.,omon . lnteresting

rhen rhor steichen, knowingtg r, ,rr, ,rl ,,.ir.., This is perhaps why photoreaLism is known both

himsetf in rhe ptdce of on onongmous orisrocrdr as a dispLay of incredibLe painting skil[ and at the2s}eleuze op. cit26Sigmund Freud. "lnterpretotion of Dreoms" S.E. art... aLmost not art.27uol. 4-5, 1900.?7John Solt in conuersotion uith the duthor 16.9.98

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When a photograph is painted by hand the surlaceinfLates Like an air bag against the index of reaLity, and

in some ways the picture's demands become simpLe and focussed. The workof Fairnington and others can be imaged here in the book as co[our plates,but these very reproductions siLence their simp[e request. lf the work ofphoto painting has an agenda it is an unequivocaLone: it wants you. lf thesepictures present bLand reproduction as visuaL pLeasure it is a trap Like the

fisherman's fly. They divert us, but their demand is for an archaic audienceand fusion with the fLesh, and they are not interested in survivors. This

is work which wants to be seen. Here ambition is a vacuum.

ALthough I have been considering masochism, mascuLinity and the Law ofthe father, I think there are connections to be made with the initiaL NochLin

quote about the meniaLtasks of domestic Labour, the art work and the rootsof women's subordination. NochLin's comments come from the mid t97os,

a moment which raised consciousness and Laid out the basic questions ofthe modern Women's Movement. Feminism has its roots in'sociaI reaLity',

in Lived experience but its aspirations are not so easily located and probabLy

consist of a range of conflicting ideaLisations.,At times, the ideaLs offeminism sound simiLar to the poetics of servitude mentioned above - ihatis, the need to invest the mother image with power, and to dectare a war

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of independence on the cuLtural regime of sexuaLdifference and the ruleof the father. lt is with poetic Licence and witd speculation then that I 6qisee connections between the roots ol the desire for sociaL reform

^^,-r ^',painting Not quite as Nochlin suggests, that Lhe servitude p.u.ti=Jdlnu"otophoto painting has its roots in sociaL reality but rather that in an invertedsLippage of this formation the social ideaLs of feminism have their rootsin something more chaotic and unciviLised.

lf photo painting shows itse[f to us as a rich surface, a divertingaesthetic expenience surrounding a simiLar chaos, an erotics of entropy,then we couLd say that the explicit desires for social reform are lrke thecLothes of this erotics of entropy, which is usuaLLy productive[y repressed.It is these clothes that photo painting makes visibLe.

As a way of rounding off, lwant to consider again the work of Jeff WatLwho offers us a different re[ationship to tradition, and to painting,quite different to that of photo painting djscussed above. WatL's work isnot based on pLeasurabLe subjection, but rather something more likemaslerfuLserviIude.

In WaLL's work we are set the task of learning io study the image _ asit is in front of us and as it is set out in art history and criticaI discourse.This attention that an encounter with waLt's work calLs for brings to mindearly BBC chiLdren's programmes such as Listen with Mother, where theactivity and the time spent Listening and learning is aLways stightLy selfconscious, stightLy institutional. we can account for this time spent studyingJeff WaIL's images and texts with aLmost as much precision as with thosereguLar transmissions. In fact, this time, this emphasis Laid onseLf conscious [ooking and thinking becomes an important account ofsubjectivity. WhiLst we may become aware of the power relations whichmake subjectivity emerge, we are none the Less presented with a spacethat is alive to these contradiciions, and there is this sense of liberatorypotentiaL there.

These concLuding remarks are ihen just introductory points for anequation between the sensuality of subjectivity {photo paintingJ and theinstitutionaLquality of an idea [WaLtJ. For me to end here, what I havedone is point to themes of pLeasurable subjection and masterfuLservitude,features taken from the surface of other more schoLarly works. Copyingagain emerges as a resistant mode of production: not quite Legitimateby academic criterion yet present and productive in the formation ofaspiration and agency. Whilst photo painters copy to revoke power, andinvoke tradition, WalL could be said to copy and induce copies without even

noticing it, having become a pedagogicaL institution, or in his own words'on interiorised academg' .zB