Stories and Events Incorporated in a Medium to Capturing Personal Roots

Della Chester

Loss has been a large part of my life in the past year and a half, and thus it has affected my practice. Using the mediums and history that my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents taught me, I can honour them even though they may no longer be physically here. Film photography has been a comfort as it has allowed me to get thoroughly lost in the motion of capturing and chemical development yet still have those from my heritage with me. My father, his mother and my mother's father were photographers, and my great-grandfather was an oil painter and professional photo engraver. They will always be connected to me whatever I do with my practice. The philosophers Susan Sontag, Roland Barthes and Claire Bishop influenced my art notion. Ansel Easton Adams, Eugene Atget and Rini Ruiz are three photographers that have related well to my practice and yet still given me room for growth by influencing me to reflect on ideas the general photographic community places upon me.

My practice relates with the work of Ansel Easton Adams, a well-known film photographer from the 1930s. His work is mainly classified as landscape photography and mine more experimental, we not only love film but also what we are capturing. For him, his main passion to grasp was the Yosemite Valley; mine is my heritage and generational roots and both film photography and being an artist. For him, being an environmentalist and being able to put himself in the environment allows him to be then able to use his post-processing techniques to immerse his viewer in work, being able to reach people with photography about environmentalism. While some may classify him as a landscape photographer, his notion is first being an environmentalist, which goes beyond the limitations of a category such as landscape photography. It is a way to connect with those I have lost, to spend time with them even though they may no longer be physically here. Ansel and I put a great deal of ourselves, our passion into our work/practice and try not to let the ideas and limitations of others weigh us down.

Roland Barthes, a philosopher, deemed by the photographic community to be one of the most influential writers in photography and my practice. He was not a photographer and said in his book ‘Camera Lucida’ that he does not desire to be; he only wishes to be occasionally captured or to become a viewer. However, he believes you shouldn't restrict photography by modern terms such as portrait, landscape, street photography, and more; instead, he focuses on two main components: Studium and Punctum. A Studium is an image that gets a general interest from the viewer and the photograph, as well as the photographer's adherence to aesthetics and the rules of photography, such as the rule of thirds and the correct exposure levels. However, the images can never spark a deep-rooted feeling in the viewer. Punctum however, can do just that. Connecting deeply within the viewer, perhaps bringing forth emotions long ago or being the final tiny pebble that breaks the dam. Either way, the image is constrained by the typical photographic and social structure yet still profoundly affects the viewer. I felt this way in my practice; however, I never quite had the words to describe it. For the first time, I feel fully seen in my practice. I have been chasing the punctum all along. As Barthes wasn't and did not want to be a photographer, I feel he missed a significant aspect of the photographic process. That being the ideas and values that constitute the approach of the individual photographer. While I agree with the definition and explanation of punctum, I feel that punctum can be more than one aspect of photography. My punctum is the process of development in film photography. It is how I connect with my history, the camera and the knowledge that was given to me by my family physically connecting us. Development is an embodied process through the making/capturing of images and the chemical development process, which is similar to my papa’s (great grandfather) hands-on photo engraving or my grandmother's (father's mother) photo albums and calendars. The photographer also invests through their time and finances. It is a long process from an idea or shooting location to chemical development, then scanning and printing and for me, I have to do everything physically to connect with something to understand truly; thus, through time and physical embodiment, I become part of the process as much as what is captured in the final image. Adams seems to have found his punctum as well, environmentalism, through photography, and thus Adams can make powerful and impactful works.

Speaking about being captured in photographs, Barthes states, “To become an object made one suffer as much as a surgical operation, then a device was invented, a kind of prosthesis invisible to the lens, which supported and maintained the body and its passage to immobility” Barthes says that he is uncomfortable when having his photograph taken as when you capture a photograph of someone, you capture a part of them as well. It is now painfully frozen in time. I feel similar to Barthes in this statement as we see proof of this every day, whether it be looking at a photograph of someone who has passed or looking back on photographs taken from your childhood, each image just as they were then. Barthes's quote reminds me of Eugene Atget’s work. Atget was a film photographer in the late 1800s and early 1900s focusing on capturing Old Paris as documentation and memorialising Old Paris before its demolition, using the camera for what Barthes is afraid of. Appreciating his work as it allowed me to travel back to a place I never knew.

Like Barthes said, “Cameras, in short, we are clocks for seeing.” In contrast, Susan Sontag, a philosopher in her book “On Photography”, states, “Industrial societies turn their citizens into image junkies. It is the most irresistible form of mental pollution” Thinking about her statement, amazes me as she never saw what would happen with technology constantly overstimulating us with photographs nonconsensually. She then goes on to say, “After 30 years, a saturation point may have been reached in these last decades, ‘concerned’ photography has done at least as much to deaden consciousness as to arouse it” due to the exposure of the media that we consume we are desensitised to the traumatic events around us. I feel as though images from World War II had such a significant impact because photography wasn't even close to what it is today. As a teen, I saw someone's head being cut off online, and today live footage from the war in Ukraine, we are so desensitised we just scroll on to the following clip. Barthes, a philosopher in his book ‘Camera Lucida’, states, “Cameras, in short, are clocks for seeing” However, we don't see any more. We are so blinded by society and how we compartmentalise and categorise photography and moving images with terms and values such as Aesthetics, Landscape, Portrait, Street and Urban photography. Sontag made such an insightful statement about the over-saturation in the photographic community years before the big technological boom, and I feel that statement reflects well back to my and Adam’s practices as we both put ourselves into the work rather than producing work for the sake of it. With each piece, we are critically thinking about the context and implications of the creation of each work, unlike mass-produced works for the benefit of those who will never see the cost. “There can be no evidence, photographic or otherwise, of an event until the event itself has been named and characterised.” Feeling this to be still true today as the way things are named is reflected in the type of photography. For example, soccer coincides with sports photography and protests or marches with political photography; due to this, they are restricted from progressing any further than a representation of what was. Like Barthes, both philosophers fall on the truth that some words and ways of thinking limit us from a deeper level of understanding.

Claire Bishop, a philosopher, talks in her book ‘Artificial Hells’ about how participatory art frequently accidentally falls into a pattern of prioritising a community focus and often neglects the aesthetics/artwork side of participatory art. To say this and agree with her, I have to be careful as not to receive hateful backlash and to be constructive. Due to the backlash from saying something like this in the art world, I have to be careful, which is why it has taken so long for someone to do so. Bishop isn’t saying that all of these practices are bad; instead, how, because of the nature of their practice values, it is hard to critique them as to be able to improve with one another. Stalling the growth and development of participatory art practices. She speaks to how participatory art is suffering not only due to the lack of criticism but also post-event. If you are not one of the few lucky ones to personally be there, you frequently have to rely on poorly taken photographs that are often of a bunch of people wandering around and give minimal insight into the work. We believe the practice should be well documented unless artistically otherwise, sharing information and with one another to better ourselves. Rinzi Ruiz, a digital photographer, while her works aren't performances to be interacted with in a mainly physical participatory manner, they still seem as though they are performative. Ruiz’s photograph "Hello darkness my old friend" feels performative from the shadows and, contrast, to the name. The image has participatory art connections to it whilst being a still work, combining movement and photography to create a blend of artistic environments. This has a great reflection in my practice as I use the equipment my grandparents and great-grandparents gave me to create, celebrate and document my/our history/heritage. Bishop, like Barthes and Sontag, speaks about how sometimes photographic communities restrict and confine us by social standards, thus blocking us from progressing.

We need to be able to criticise and work outside the box constructively. If we don't, what is the point? Criticism, Punctum, and the overuse of certain photographic practices are all things that build my notion. The criticism allows growth while still balancing the past. The Punctum is different from person to person, and the overstimulation of the photographic world makes us stop and think about the clarity and intentions behind our works. These philosophers and artists have all become a part of my practice by allowing me to refine my work unburdened by the boundaries of the photographic community, whether they mean to or not.