TY - JOUR
AU - WILSON, DAWN M.
AB - Self‐portrait photography presents an elucidatory range of cases for investigating the relationship between automatism and artistic agency in photography—a relationship that is seen as a problem in the philosophy of art. I discuss self‐portraits by photographers who examine and portray their own identities as artists working in the medium of photography. I argue that the automatism inherent in the production of a photograph has made it possible for artists to extend the tradition of self‐portraiture in a way that is radically different from previous visual arts. In Section I, I explain why self‐portraiture offers a way to address the apparent conflict between automatism and agency that is debated in the philosophy of art. In Section II, I explain why mirrors play an important function in the production of a traditional self‐portrait. In Sections III and IV, I discuss how photographers may create self‐portraits with and without the use of mirrors to show how photography offers unique and important new forms of self‐portraiture. i.automatism, agency, and representational art In the philosophy of art, discussions of photography recurrently feature versions of the idea that automatism stands in competition or conflict with artistic agency. “Automatism” is the notion that a photograph is the product of a nonconscious, natural, or mechanical process. This being so, it is supposed that a photograph is not primarily the product of an agent's conscious control, and it is inferred that an artistic agent can have only a limited or inhibited responsibility for the salient features of a photograph. The idea that scope for artistic intentionality is diminished by automatism has been a basis for treating photographs as inferior to other art forms and remains a hurdle for evaluations of photography in the philosophy of art. Art history can demonstrate that many artists have made advantages of automatism in photography to create works of art that feature chance, accident, abstraction, repetition, found objects, and effects of nonconscious control. Philosophers who acknowledge the significance of such works as art may nonetheless remain concerned that automatism presents a barrier to creating works that require manifest conscious intent: in particular, representational art. A picture is representational, it is argued, only if it displays the conscious control of the artistic agent in a way that guides the viewer's interpretation of the depicted subject.1 The impetus to account for representational art explains why apparent conflict between agency and automatism is central to discussions of photography in the philosophy of art. Various approaches might be taken to address this area of philosophical concern. One approach might aim to revise the requirements for representation, perhaps to recognize a lower threshold of artistic intent. An alternative could be to relegate the presupposition that representation is of paramount importance, as might happen if we were willing to judge photography on a par with sonic art rather than visual art. The most direct response would set out to refute automatism in order to make room for agency. My approach is not a direct response in any of these ways; in particular, I am not offering an argument against automatism. Instead, I aim to expand and reconfigure the philosophical debate by championing a perspective that has been insufficiently addressed. It is usual for photography to be investigated and characterized from the perspective of a perceiver confronting a peculiar kind of visual object. In this vein, philosophers have debated whether a photograph is “transparent,” whether it is a “spatially agnostic informant,” and whether it provides perceptual access to objects and facts.2 Theories of this kind often assume that photographs have distinctive and interesting properties because they are “mind‐independent” images and are primarily the product of automatism rather than agency. To expand the field of inquiry, I make a compelling case for realizing that an account of photography should seek to accommodate, rather than exclude, the perspective of agents where they are involved in the production process. Thus, we would not just be interested in finding out “why the experience of viewing a photograph is different from viewing a painting”; we would also be interested in finding out “why the experience of posing for a photograph is different from posing for a painting”—just as one example. Someone who believes that automatism in the production of photographs precludes artistic agency might seek to rule out my approach by arguing that the perspective of the creative agent cannot be treated as relevant; however, in my view, this prejudges the point at issue. The notion that automatism conflicts with agency retains intractable plausibility precisely because the concept of a photograph has been primarily theorized from the perspective of a viewer while “bracketing” and excluding the role of the photographer as epiphenomenal or conceptually irrelevant. When photographs are analyzed from the perspective of a viewer, a concession is commonly granted that any given photograph could have been produced without intentional agency: perhaps, it is said, the camera could have been triggered by accident, yet the photograph would still look exactly the same. This concession of a hypothetical possibility is too often rapidly converted into the idea that intentional agency can be “bracketed” from further consideration without loss. In fact, an artwork and its hypothetical “accidental” counterpart should not be considered interchangeable solely because they (could) appear the same from the perspective of a viewer: from the perspective of the photographer, there is a definite difference that cannot be ignored without loss. If philosophical investigations were primarily, or just equally, to incorporate the perspective of agents where these are in fact involved in the creation of photographs, the apparent conflict between agency and automatism would not arise or become entrenched. My task is to show how giving credence to the perspective of photographers and their artistic activity is a substantive contribution to the philosophical debate. To achieve this, in what follows, I investigate the tradition of representational self‐portraits in the visual arts: the kind of self‐portrait, roughly speaking, where we see a genuine likeness of the face or whole figure of the artist.3 Self‐portraiture is uniquely important for my purposes because in this art form, an artist self‐consciously and self‐critically explores her relationship with the medium in which she portrays herself. This is particularly true of self‐portraits in which the artist portrays herself as an artist, though an artist may choose to portray entirely different aspects of her identity.4 The self‐portraits that interest me here are works that self‐reflexively depict distinctive qualities of the artist, the medium, and the relationship between the two. In photographic artworks of this kind, automatism and artistic agency are explored and presented in ways that are open to philosophical scrutiny. For example, in Edward Steichen's Self‐portrait (1901), the artist has depicted himself in the traditional stance of a self‐portrait painter, holding a brush and palette (Figure 1). 1 Open in new tabDownload slide Edward Steichen, Self‐portrait (1901). Gum bichromate print, image size: 21 × 15.9 cm (8 1/4 × 6 1/4 in.), mount size: 24.4 × 19.2 cm (9 5/8 × 7 9/16 in.), The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Through his pose, Steichen is commenting that his artistry as a photographer involves no less skill than a painter, and through the softened chiaroscuro rendering of this self‐portrait, he is also commenting on the distinctive artistic potential of his photographic medium: creative effects that are characteristic of the gum‐bichromate printing process. During printing, the coated surface of the photograph is wet and malleable, and in many of his early works, Steichen achieved his creative effects by working on the surface with a paintbrush, leaving discernible brushstrokes. Steichen has produced a photograph that asserts itself as having a status equal to a self‐portrait painting—both in terms of his own artistry and the artistic potential of the medium in which he works. However, this manifesto for pictorialism will not remove entrenched philosophical doubts about the problem of automatism in photography. Rather, this work is vulnerable to the objection that the photographer has relied on a painter's methods to exert appreciable conscious control over the appearance of his self‐portrait.5 Thus, it does nothing to dispel the skeptical idea that photography can only succeed as art when it aspires to the condition of painting. Despite his aim, Steichen, it could be argued, has failed to create a self‐portrait as a photographer, though he may have created a self‐portrait as a painter. I disagree and will return to this example after further discussion. Understanding the importance of the artist's perspective will make it possible to recognize how Steichen's self‐portrait is a distinctively photographic artwork. Many examples of self‐portraiture in photography repay philosophical investigation either in specific respects or because they raise general questions. Addressing these examples has the potential to alter our conception of photography, but also our conception of self‐portraiture. A passport photograph from an automated photobooth is, usually, simply considered to be a document rather than a self‐portrait, yet artists such as Andy Warhol have created self‐portraits from these machines. I consider in what sense these and other examples are traditional self‐portraits and argue that the art form is extended rather than restricted by the automatism inherent in photography. ii.mirrors in self‐portraiture Before examining photography, I note some significant points about the history of self‐portraiture. Over many centuries, artists have successfully created self‐portraits that display genuine likenesses of their own appearances even though it is not possible for an artist to directly see her own face. To achieve this, an artist must work from an intermediary visual image of her face, such as the image displayed on a reflective surface such as still water, glass, or polished metal. For several centuries, artists employed mirrors as an invaluable instrument for the art of self‐portraiture. A flat mirror is a static, two‐dimensional surface that displays, by reflection, a nonstatic, three‐dimensional image. Alternatively, a concave mirror may produce, by projection, a nonstatic, two‐dimensional image, displayed on a surface such as a wall.6 Johannes Gumpp's Self‐portrait of 1646 depicts the process of self‐portraiture with a flat mirror, but in doing so it illustrates some of the intriguing challenges facing an artist who undertakes a work of self‐portraiture as traditionally conceived (Figure 2).7 2 Open in new tabDownload slide Johannes Gumpp, Self‐portrait (1646). Oil on canvas. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence © 2011 Photo SCALA, Florence, courtesy of the Ministero Beni e Att. Culturali. Gumpp depicts himself as an artist standing in front of a flat mirror, painting his self‐portrait on a canvas. The face of the artist is not directly visible, as we see him only from behind, but we judge from the fact that he is depicted as looking into the mirror that we are, on the left, seeing his genuine appearance and, on the right, seeing a self‐portrait of his appearance.8 Within the depicted scene the presence of a true likeness, displayed by the mirror image, guarantees that the self‐portrait we can see is a good likeness of the face that we do not see. This is because, even though we cannot directly compare his face with the self‐portrait, we can compare the self‐portrait with the mirror image.9 The depicted artist is using a mirror precisely because it is impossible for him to see his own face, but it is also impossible for the artist to see his own back, so we must assume that Gumpp's portrayal of his own figure from behind is an imaginary invention—unless, improbably, he worked from an additional mirror image that is not featured in the depicted arrangement.10 Matters are more complicated if we recall that a mirror image is three‐dimensional and nonstatic. Gumpp is compelled to depict the mirror image by an image that is two‐dimensional and static, with the result that his picture of the mirror image has the same visual properties as his picture of the painted image. To help to differentiate the two, he has carefully depicted a beveled frame on the mirror. Although the picture initially seems to present a familiar or plausible event, we need to appreciate that it presents an important fiction. The scene this depicts involves the fantastical possibility that a three‐dimensional mirror image might be “frozen” as a static, two‐dimensional image to serve as a totally accurate likeness of the artist's face. This fantasy has a long association with photography through the idea that a photograph is a kind of mirror image miraculously “arrested” and preserved.11 Mirrors occupy a symbolic and semi‐mythical status in the history of the representational arts, as objects that can perfectly replicate appearances or create virtual doubles of real objects.12 My interest is specifically to consider the function of mirrors in the production of self‐portraits as the basis for talking about photography and photographs. To consider what is at stake in Gumpp's painting, imagine what would change if the static, two‐dimensional image on the left did not depict a mirror image, but another painted picture. Suddenly we would no longer have a guarantee within the depicted scene that the image on the left is a genuine likeness of the face that we cannot see. Equally, we could no longer be confident that the image on the right is a genuine self‐portrait. Instead, all we would know is that the image on the right is a close likeness of the image on the left. Perhaps the artist is simply creating the reproduction of a portrait for a client.13 A mirror image is radically different in kind from a painted image, and Gumpp's picture reveals what is at stake in this important difference. An artist who portrays a person usually wants to actually see the features of that person, rather than work from a picture of those features. Although self‐portraiture faces the unique obstacle already described, the same principle applies. It would be surprising if Gumpp were creating his self‐portrait by copying from a portrait of himself by another artist.14 In self‐portraiture, an artist seeks to have the same kind of access to her own face as she has to the face of any other person whom she might choose to portray; this is why mirrors are invaluable: it is not possible to see my own face directly, but I can see my own face in a mirror.15 An artist who uses a mirror as an intermediary visual image of her face is not working from a picture. A mirror may be positioned expressly for the purpose of displaying the artist's face, but this does not mean that the mirror displays a pictorial representation of the artist's face. A fortiori, the mirror image on its own is not a portrait or self‐portrait. I have noted that, because an artist cannot see her own face, mirrors are important in self‐portraiture: a mirror makes it possible for the artist to create a likeness of her own appearance without recourse to a picture of her own face. In Section III, I examine the distinctive effects that artists have achieved by using mirrors in self‐portrait photography. iii.self‐portrait photographs with mirrors Like Gumpp's painting, Ilse Bing's photograph Self‐portrait with Leica (1931) depicts a complex three‐way arrangement so that Bing can situate her self‐portrait within a depiction of the production of that self‐portrait (Figure 3). 3 Open in new tabDownload slide Ilse Bing, Self‐portrait with Leica (1931). Gelatin silver print, 11 × 14 in. © Estate of Ilse Bing. Like Gumpp's painting, this photograph has an intriguing structure. The photograph presents two images of Bing: on the left, we see a reflection of her profile in a mirror; on the right, we see her frontal self‐portrait. It is usual for portraits to show a person's head either in profile or in a frontal position, but this self‐portrait shows both alternatives simultaneously. In both cases we see a Leica camera in front of her face, though her face remains clearly visible. The image on the left strikes us immediately as mirror image, but it takes longer to notice that the image on the right is also a mirror image as the main mirror is not immediately obvious. A beveled edge of the main mirror, running down the left‐hand side, makes it possible to grasp the full complexity of the arrangement. Bing has depicted the presence of two mirrors in this picture.16 Like Gumpp's depiction of himself at work, Bing has created a photograph that portrays her own appearance and at the same time depicts her in the process of creating that photograph. However, whereas Gumpp's painting contained the imagined depiction of his figure from behind, everything depicted here has a double guarantee that it is a true likeness: first because everything we see in the picture is reflected in a mirror, second because the image we see is the product of a camera recording reflected light from the mirror. To appreciate this point, we should note that the elements depicted in this arrangement play different roles. The small mirror is depicted to show Bing in the act of taking a photograph, using a shutter release cable; the Leica camera is depicted to show the photographic means of production of the image; and, thanks to its beveled edge, the main mirror is also carefully depicted. The inclusion of the mirror edge in the photograph entitles us to judge that most of what we see (except only the edge of the mirror) was reflected in the mirror surface.17 We see this technique in many examples of self‐portraits in painting as well as photography, but when it occurs in photography, the effect is particularly significant: under these conditions, we are in a position to judge that the camera has recorded its own reflection. In the case of Bing's self‐portrait, we see both the face of the artist and the “face” of the camera: it is a double self‐portrait. Our sense that the camera has produced a true likeness of its own appearance serves as a guarantee that the face of the artist is also a true likeness. To consider the significance of this idea, imagine a different version of Bing's photograph. This time there is no evidence of the edge of a main mirror. We see only the small mirror image on the left and Bing with her camera on the right. Now, we have no signal to provide reassurance that the camera we see has recorded its own reflection. Instead, we could equally well imagine that the photograph was produced by a second camera—one that is not itself depicted in the photograph. Using a second camera, Bing would be able to portray herself as an artist using a Leica, but the Leica would not have created a photograph of itself. In a genuine example, when Gillian Wearing created a self‐portrait in the guise of Diane Arbus, Me as Arbus (2008), the work is a double disguise: the face we see is not Wearing's own, and the camera we see is not the one used to create the photograph. By comparison, Diane Arbus's Self‐portrait with Mirror (1945) makes it evident that the camera we see has recorded its own reflection by clearly including the edge of the mirror. It is significant that although Bing portrays herself as a photographer creating a self‐portrait, she is not taking a photograph with her left eye pressed to the viewfinder of her camera: rather, her right eye is clearly in view and her left eye also appears to the side of the viewfinder, above the “eye” of her camera. A photographer using the “Leica A” camera would be able to frame a photograph with right eye closed and left eye against the viewfinder. Bing is not looking at her own image through the camera, but rather gazing directly at the mirror in front of her, having secured the camera position on a tripod. Arbus adopts a more direct version of this pose by appearing at the side of her camera, with face and body fully in view, displaying her pregnant figure. Like a painter creating a traditional self‐portrait, each artist works with the mirror as an intermediary visual image to have conscious control over the way her appearance is depicted in the self‐portrait. Bing has carefully adjusted her pose in the mirror to ensure that her own face is not obscured by the camera, and Arbus stands forward with the camera only half in view. This makes it clear to the viewer that the artist's conscious agency is depicted as the controlling influence in these self‐portraits, rather than the camera mechanism. Like the Steichen example, these photographs assert that the photograph is the product of artistic agency, but we must recognize that this is not sufficient to alleviate the philosopher's concern about automatism inherent in the production process. Later artworks, which also feature arrangements of the artist, camera, and mirror, reverse the impression given by the examples considered so far. Photography from the 1960s is marked by its departure from portrayals of the artist's agency and instead often presents photographs as the product of a mechanically automatized process. One example, by John Hilliard, Camera Recording Its Own Condition: (7 Apertures, 10 Speeds, 2 Mirrors) (1971), explores the phenomenon of a camera repeatedly recording its own reflection in a mirror (see Figure 4). Another example, by William Anastasi, Nine Polaroid Portraits of a Mirror (1967), explores the phenomenon of a mirror repeatedly recording its reflection in a camera. In each case, the relationship between mirror and camera is exhibited as an automatic sequence of reflection, recording, and repetition, systematically arranged in a grid. 4 Open in new tabDownload slide John Hilliard, Camera Recording Its Own Condition (7 Apertures, 10 Speeds, 2 Mirrors) (1971). B/w photographs on card, mounted on Perspex, 86 × 72 in. Collection of Tate Gallery, London. © John Hilliard. In both examples the photographer is at least partially visible, but the works are not presented as ordinary self‐portraits of the artist, and the titles instead indicate that the subjects of the work are, respectively, the camera and the mirror. Whereas Bing used a small mirror to show the artist controlling the camera, the small mirror in Hilliard's work is positioned to show the control settings on the camera itself. Anastasi, like Bing, initially makes his face visible around the side of the camera, but the accumulation of photographs in the sequence increasingly obscures his presence.18 These artists have created the impression that the artist is present merely to assist the camera, rather than the other way round, as if the artist serves only as a shutter release mechanism in an otherwise automatic task. Many philosophers have argued that photography is relevantly the product of artistic agency because the photographer is responsible for adjusting the camera settings, positioning the camera, and choosing the moment of exposure. A deeper philosophical concern is that even if the photographer is responsible for determining these variables, still the image is not handmade by the artist, but rather merely “selected” from a matrix of possibilities that could be automatically generated by the mechanism.19 The grid format employed by Hilliard and Anastasi reinforces this anxiety and highlights the perceived gap between photography and handmade media such as painting or drawing. Unlike paintings, these images, we are invited to acknowledge, were principally generated by camera technology. The photographer makes selections or arrangements, but in these works that self‐reflexively explore the production of photographs, automatism seems to overshadow agency. Nevertheless, the striking format of these works leaves us in no doubt that the viewer's interpretation of the depicted subject is guided by the conscious control of the artistic agent. In this respect, these conceptual works are not a departure from authored art. The artworks discussed in this section stand in the framework of traditional self‐portraiture, where an artist faces a mirror and creates a portrait of her own appearance.20 I have focused on works that use mirrors to self‐reflexively interrogate the means of producing a photographic self‐portrait. The resultant photographs show the face of the camera, as well as or instead of the face of the artist.21 I have shown that within this format, some photographers have created works that assert the primacy of the artist's agency. Other photographers have used the format to emphasize the automatism of photography. The philosophical problem of agency and automatism in representational art cannot be straightforwardly settled by appeal to these examples. Indeed, given the diverse ways that artists have critically examined the relationship between automatism and agency, art is a mirror for the problems raised in philosophical inquiry. To investigate the relation between agency and automatism in photography, I propose to move away from the territory of traditional self‐portraiture, which is overshadowed by the paradigm of painting. In the next section, I argue that automatism makes it possible for photography to offer an entirely new form of self‐portraiture, a kind of artwork impossible in painting. These examples reveal a different understanding of the relationship between automatism and artistic agency. iv.self‐portraits without mirrors Nan Goldin included many self‐portraits in her published collection titled I’ll Be Your Mirror. Self‐portrait Battered in Hotel, Berlin (1984) is a photograph using mirrors, taken in the self‐reflexive style previously described. Goldin holds her camera at chest height, leaving her injured face clearly in view. To the right of the image we see the beveled edge of the main mirror, and the faces of Goldin and her camera are reflected a second time in a side mirror. Soon afterward, she produced a different photograph showing the extent of her recovery, One Month after Being Battered (1984). This time no mirror is involved. Goldin gazes directly ahead, face to face with her camera. In contrast with Goldin's earlier image, the later photograph provides no signs, in content or title, to inform the viewer that it is a self‐portrait. Unlike the other examples that I have considered, it is not a self‐reflexive portrait of the artist at work, and the camera does not appear in view. We might consider it simply to stand in the tradition of head‐and‐shoulders self‐portrait paintings, by Van Gogh and others, which contain no signs of painting equipment and do not depict the artist posing as an artist. However, although the format may initially seem familiar, this example illustrates a significantly different kind of self‐portrait. I have claimed that, historically, an artist who seeks to represent a likeness of her own face or figure requires an intermediary visual image, such as a mirror image. Many examples of self‐portraiture in photography lie within this tradition, but the arrival of photography did not merely offer a new way to create traditional self‐portraits: it also made possible an entirely new kind of self‐portrait. With photography, for the first time an artist is able to create a self‐portrait without looking at an intermediary visual image. As the Goldin example shows us, an artist may create a self‐portrait by facing the camera and taking a photograph.22 In her earlier self‐portrait, Goldin is self‐consciously examining her appearance in the mirror and using that intermediary image to pose herself and compose her photograph. Sitting in front of the camera, Goldin poses for the later self‐portrait without looking at an image of her own appearance.23 Though she has conscious control over the position, settings, and timing of the camera exposure, the crucial recording stage of the photographic process is a causal phenomenon that produces visual effects outside her conscious control.24 Unlike any artist in the history of painting, Goldin will be able to make surprising discoveries about her appearance by looking at her self‐portrait. Although Goldin's later self‐portrait was not created with a mirror, it stylistically resembles that tradition of head‐and‐shoulders self‐portraiture: Goldin looks purposefully into the camera just as she might otherwise meet her own gaze in the mirror. The appearance that she presents to herself in this photograph is one that she could have created by traditional methods of self‐portraiture, which is not to ignore that the viewer's response is different when the image is a photograph rather than a painting. For one thing, a painting from a mirror often displays right–left reversal. Van Gogh's Self‐portrait with Bandaged Ear (1889) portrays the artist with his right ear bandaged, although in fact his left ear was injured.25 The same reversal occurs in Goldin's hotel mirror self‐portrait. By comparison, in Goldin's self‐portrait without a mirror, the large bruise around her left eye is not a reversed image. In this photograph we see Goldin portrayed as another artist might portray her from direct observation, not as she would portray herself by looking at her own reflection.26 The examples considered so far have taken a step beyond traditional self‐portraiture, but still do not sufficiently illustrate how radically photography expands the art form. What remains to be considered is how automatism in photography makes it possible to create a uniquely different kind of self‐portrait. Far removed from the gum‐bichromate process favored by Steichen, the camera technology favored by Andy Warhol involved a high degree of machine automatism: Polaroid cameras and photobooths both offer an automated developing and printing process that is designed to deliver a final product without further intervention by the photographer. Warhol produced a wide range of self‐portrait images, including photographs taken with a mirror and photographs gazing into the camera lens similar to ones already discussed.27 Despite the casual and experimental style, they are otherwise similar to traditional frontal self‐portraits, but in Self‐portrait (Eyes Closed) (1979) he created a different kind of image. With his eyes closed, Warhol presents his face to the Polaroid camera and submits to its gaze without looking back. This example shows that photography releases artists from dependence on the mirror image in more than one sense: an artist may choose not to look at a mirror image while creating the photograph, but, more importantly, an artist may create a self‐portrait that portrays a genuine likeness of her face that it would be impossible for her to view even with a mirror.28 Photography gives the artist access to otherwise inaccessible and unexpected features of her own appearance in new and creatively significant ways.29 The idea that photographs enable an artist to portray herself in ways that are otherwise impossible is a specific instance of a much wider notion: photography provides ways of viewing the world that are otherwise unavailable to human vision. However, as this is only possible insofar as the production does not depend on the conscious awareness of human agents, it allows doubts about the status of photography as art to resurface. My claim is that, with the automatism of photography, an artist is able to create self‐portraits that would be impossible in traditional visual media.30 Whereas the appearance of a painting is governed by how the artist sees or imagines her model and sees the work that she is creating, the visual appearance of a photograph does not depend on the conscious eye‐to‐hand control of a human agent. But for this reason Warhol's Polaroid is open to an objection that would reverberate against all works of self‐portrait photography. The objection is that these photographs are not an extension to the category of self‐portraiture because, simply put, they are not works of self‐portraiture at all: they do not to a sufficient degree manifest the intentional agency of the artist portrayed. Certainly, the photographs feature a particular person and present a visual likeness that is interesting or revealing, but the artist who features in the picture has not consciously controlled the production of the image; rather, the appearance of the picture is the nonconscious product of the camera mechanism. As far as the viewer is concerned, this photograph could have arisen accidentally or could have been produced entirely independent of Warhol's conscious control. The whole point of my present argument has been to show that an objection of this kind lacks credibility once we consider artworks like the ones already discussed. These self‐reflexive self‐portraits compel us to recognize that there is a significant difference between types of photograph according to all the relevant circumstances of their production, rather than simply facts about the degree of automatism in the technological apparatus. I have proposed that the perspective of the artist must be included as part of our concept of photography and photographs. This is not a matter of calculating to what extent the photographer personally handled the material or intervened at stages of the process. Instead, it is a matter of understanding that what the artist takes herself to be doing makes a manifest difference. An artist might take a Polaroid snapshot of her face as a simple record for the purpose of painting a self‐portrait.31 Alternatively, she might take a Polaroid snapshot of her face as a self‐portrait. She sits in a photobooth one day to get a passport photograph and another day to create a self‐portrait. The difference cannot be settled by appeal to how much conscious control is exerted over the camera settings, as this may be exactly the same in both counterpart cases. Rather, to appreciate the difference is to recognize that one of the defining conditions of a self‐portrait is settled by whether and how the artist is posing for a self‐portrait. We see this in Figure 5, when, like Warhol, Gavin Turk faces the camera with his eyes closed for Portrait of something that i will never really see (1997). 5 Open in new tabDownload slide Gavin Turk, Portrait of something that i will never really see (1997). C‐Type print. 90 × 90 cm. Original in color. © Gavin Turk. The title makes clear that this is a self‐portrait conceived by Turk even though in fact the camera was operated by his collaborator Anthony Oliver. Posing for a self‐portrait, which requires a distinctive form of self‐scrutiny, is a different activity than posing for a portrait, or for a snapshot picture. A self‐portrait requires not just self‐examination, but a presentation of the self to itself. The automatism inherent in photography makes it possible to pose for self‐portraits in radically new ways, and, crucially, even if the apparatus is an entirely automatic mechanism, this does not inhibit the artist's agency to pose in a way that creatively defines the image as a self‐portrait. Instead, automatism is what makes it possible for an artist to have this distinctive form of creative self‐awareness. Francesca Woodman's Self‐portrait at 13 (1972) is a self‐reflexive work that dissects the unique demands of posing for a photographic self‐portrait (see Figure 6). The photographer depicts herself in the process of producing the self‐portrait: a shutter release cable emerges in front of the lens and stretches diagonally across the frame into her hand, obscuring a corner of the scene. The strange, umbilical appearance of the foreshortened cable reminds us that cameras can produce unanticipated optical effects, leading to distinctive features that we would be unlikely to see in a painting. The face of the subject is also obscured, this time because she has pointedly turned her face away from the camera and over her shoulder, leaving the camera to record the back of her head—a view that, like Gumpp, she is not able to see unaided. 6 Open in new tabDownload slide Francesca Woodman, Self‐Portrait at 13 (1972). Paper size 10 × 8 in. Boulder, Colorado. Estate ID/Filename: E.1. Courtesy of George and Betty Woodman. Posing for a self‐portrait in such an unusual way throws into question one of our basic assumptions about self‐portraiture: the idea that by taking herself as her own subject, the artist is willing to subject herself to scrutiny. Instead, Woodman deliberately adopts a pose that disturbs these expectations: she presents the authorial control typical of a portrait artist and at the same time the uncooperative posture of a subject who is reluctant to be portrayed. She performs herself as a controlling artist and as an uncontrollable subject. The subject who refuses to be portrayed is also the artist who seeks to secure a portrayal. In a painting, no tension of this kind could be successfully sustained because a self‐portrait cannot be created unless the subject (artist) carries out the task of painting what she sees. But Woodman's photography shows that an unresolved tension can be genuinely established: the camera mechanism will enable an artist to portray her subject, even when the artist (subject) is not granted the view of the subject that she intends to portray. Without automatism, Woodman would not be able to create this dual performance, and without her dual performance, this work would not be self‐portraiture. With the key importance of photographer's perspective in mind, it is time to reconfigure the philosophical attitude toward automatism and agency that casts doubt over Steichen's Self‐portrait. Doubt might arise, I suggested earlier, because although this work evidently displays sufficient artistic intentionality to count as a self‐portrait, it achieves this principally through painterly methods rather than by photographic methods. Certainly Steichen presented himself in the typical pose associated with a painter's self‐portrait, a pose that carries the preconception that he is viewing his appearance in a mirror. But I have argued that the difference between the pose of a painter and the pose of a photographer can be radically different in self‐portraiture. Assume for the sake of argument, but also because it seems plausible, that Steichen is posing for this self‐portrait without a mirror. Although his props symbolically indicate that he is posing as a painter, it is far more important that he is in fact posing, or presenting himself, for his self‐portrait as only a photographer can do—facing the camera in full awareness that he is harnessing the automatism of the photographic process. The artistic intentionality that seemed evident and compelling at the outset has not altered, and thus we should be in no doubt that this self‐portrait is a representational work by an artistic agent, but we should also see in the work the distinctive intentionality of a photographic artist.32 Footnotes 1 The locus classicus for this argument is Roger Scruton, “Photography and Representation,”Critical Inquiry 7 (1981): 577–603. 2 For an overview of these topics in current philosophical debate, see Diarmuid Costello and Dawn M. Phillips, “Automatism, Causality and Realism: Foundational Problems in the Philosophy of Photography,”Philosophy Compass 4 (2009): 1–21. 3 Not every picture of a person is a portrait; a painter who depicts the likeness of a studio model may produce a picture of a dancer, rather than a portrait of that model. A portrait is a study of some particular person that intentionally portrays the personal qualities of that individual. 4 Self‐portraits in the latter category include the portrayal of family identity, sexual identity, national identity, ethnic identity, and more. 5 Scruton's argument anticipates examples of this kind. He objects that representational works are not truly photographic artworks in cases where they are merely “the result of the attempt by photographers to pollute the ideal of their craft with the aims and methods of painting” (“Photography and Representation,” p. 578). 6 This phenomenon is discussed in detail by David Hockney, Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters (London: Thames and Hudson, 2006). He offers no examples of self‐portraiture using this technique, and the arrangement required would be highly impractical. 7 I say “as traditionally conceived” because the technology was not available for earlier artists to work with a mirror of this size. Albrecht Dürer, working at the turn of the fifteenth century, would have used a relatively small hand‐held mirror. See Cynthia Freeland, Portraits and Persons (Oxford University Press, 2010) p. 170; however, artists did not begin to depict themselves with their tools until the 1550s (p. 171). 8 The face on the right is both a depiction of a self‐portrait and, we assume, a real self‐portrait. 9 Norman Rockwell's Triple Self‐portrait (1960) playfully employs this strategy to invite the viewer to judge how far the artist has departed from his appearance in the mirror when painting his self‐portrait. 10 Martine Franck created a portrait photograph that in certain respects parallels the Gumpp painting: Henri Cartier‐Bresson Drawing His Self‐portrait, Paris, France (1992). We see Cartier‐Bresson from behind, with his face reflected in a mirror, drawing a self‐portrait. 11 In 1859, Oliver Wendell Holmes welcomed the invention of “the mirror with a memory”: the photograph can make “a sheet of paper reflect images like a mirror and hold them as a picture” in “The Stereoscope and the Stereograph,”Atlantic Monthly 3 (1859): 738–748, reprinted in Photography: Essays and Images, ed. Beaumont Newhall (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1980), pp. 53–62. 12 The myth of Narcissus is a primary reference point in art‐historical discussions of works that depict mirrors, particularly self‐portraits. See, for example, Carol Armstrong, “Reflections on the Mirror: Painting, Photography and the Self‐portraits of Edward Degas,”Representations 22 (1988): 108–141. 13 This scenario is plausible for a second, alternative version of the same work titled Self‐portrait with Mirror and Easel, Johannes Gumpp (1646). The alternative version, in an extended, rectangular format (128 × 90 cm), was until recently held in the Schloss Schönburg Gallery in Pockling, Germany, but is now in the hands of an anonymous owner. In the rectangular version, the face in the mirror and face on the canvas have a near identical appearance, reinforcing the notion that the painted image is a direct match for the mirror image. By comparison, in the circular version, held in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, the faces differ in appearance. Most notably, the mirror image is depicted showing the artist meeting his own gaze by staring directly ahead in the mirror, whereas the face on the canvas is shown with eyes peering to one side, as he would appear when looking sideways in the mirror. 14 Surprising but not impossible: Paul Cézanne's Self Portrait (1880–1881) is based on, though not an exact copy of, August Renoir's Portrait of Cézanne (1880). 15 There is, of course, a significant range of examples by artists from Paul Cézanne to Chuck Close who use photographs rather than a mirror as the basis for painting a self‐portrait. As my focus is self‐portrait photographs, rather than paintings, I leave these cases to one side; however, I return to the issue briefly in the final section. 16 A print of the same work in the MoMa collection is titled Self‐portrait with Mirrors. 17 Artists achieve this in numerous different ways. In Self‐portrait (c. 1944), Man Ray reveals the existence of a mirror by photographing himself touching the reflective surface. 18 Rather than showing the edge of the mirror in view, Anastasi confirms the existence of a mirror by the device of pinning a photograph to its surface. 19 John Baldessari examines this conception of photography in the series Choosing Green Beans (1972). 20 I have also indicated that some works, such as Wearing's Me as Arbus, subvert this familiar format to produce disorientating effects. Jeff Wall's Picture for Women (1979) contains multiple cues to suggest that the photograph portrays the artist and his camera reflected in a mirror, yet closer examination reveals a deeply ambiguous structure that, according to David Campany, might not include a mirror at all. See David Campany, “A Theoretical Diagram in an Empty Classroom: Jeff Wall's Picture for Women,”Oxford Art Journal 30 (2007): 7–25. 21 I have therefore not discussed a further range of interesting examples where an artist creates a self‐portrait by photographing a mirror, but without making the camera visible. See, for example, Bill Brandt, Self‐portrait with Mirror (1966); Nan Goldin, Self‐portrait in the Blue Bathroom (1991). 22 Using a separate technique, numerous photographers have created self‐portraits by photographing their own shadows. Notable examples include André Kertesz, Shadow Self‐portrait (1927); Ansel Adams, Self‐portrait, Monument Valley, Utah (1958); and Lee Friedlander, New York City (1966). These abstract silhouettes do not have sufficient visual resemblance to include them in the present discussion of representational art, though many are self‐reflexive insofar as they show the shadow of the camera as well as the artist. 23 A photographer creating a self‐portrait of this kind might decide to create a pose using a reflective surface—for example, by setting up a mirror behind the camera. More ingeniously, a mirror can be used to see the LCD display on the back of a digital camera while taking a self‐portrait. However, the simple case is all that matters here. 24 For a full characterization of this distinctive causal process, see Dawn M. Phillips, “Fixing the Image: Re‐thinking the ‘Mind‐independence’ of Photographs,”Postgraduate Journal of Aesthetics 6 (2009): 1–22. 25 I am grateful to Susie Phillips for this example. 26 To achieve the same effect, painters might employ a double arrangement of mirrors to reverse the reversal. It is possible for a photographer to deliberately create—or equally to hide—a mirror effect by printing a negative in reverse. See Campany, “A Theoretical Diagram in an Empty Classroom,” pp. 22–23. 27 For example, Andy Warhol, Self‐portrait with Polaroid Camera (1979); Andy Warhol, Grimace (1979). 28 The earliest known self‐portrait photograph is an example of this kind. Hippolyte Bayard, a pioneer of photographic technology, posed with his eyes closed for Self‐portrait as a Drowned Man (1840). 29 Artists experimenting with x‐rays and scanning technology offer an interesting extension of this point, but the focus of this discussion is limited to portrayals of visual likenesses. 30 It is possible to draw a close connection with a different “blind” process of self‐portraiture, where an artist makes a cast of her face or body by taking a mold of her features. This comparison has links to André Bazin's idea of a photograph as a “mold” akin to a death mask, “The Ontology of the Photographic Image,” in his What Is Cinema? vol. 1 (University of California Press, 1971), pp. 9–16, and it merits further discussion. However, for present purposes, I am concerned with the detailed visual likeness that is characteristic of two‐dimensional photographs rather than the abstract form that is characteristic of three‐dimensional cast sculptures. 31 According to Stephen Peterson, the photobooth images Warhol created between 1963 and 1966 were not originally exhibited as self‐portraits in their own right, but used as the basis for silkscreen works. See Stephen Peterson, “Review: I Am a Camera,”Art Journal 60 (2001): 110–112. 32 I am grateful for written comments received from Diarmuid Costello, Jason Gaiger, Margaret Iversen, Katrina Mitcheson, Olivier Tonneau, and Jonathan Wilson. I am indebted to St. Anne's College, Oxford, for appointing me to a Post‐doctoral Research Fellowship in 2010–2011. © The American Society for Aesthetics This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model) © The American Society for Aesthetics
TI - Facing the Camera: Self-portraits of Photographers as Artists
JF - The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
DO - 10.1111/j.1540-6245.2011.01498.x
DA - 2012-02-09
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/facing-the-camera-self-portraits-of-photographers-as-artists-18T42QZe7W
SP - 55
EP - 66
VL - 70
IS - 1
DP - DeepDyve
ER -