Photography / Writing / Postmodernism

abbas 91 M.A. Abbas Photography / Writing / Postmodernism Introduction In the nineteenth century when it was discovered, photography was experienced as a series of jolts against entrenched ideas about art. It called into question many beliefs relating to both the nature and the conditions of artistic production, e.g., beliefs about authorship, creativity, intentionality , originality, authenticity and so on. Two options were open, both difficult ones: either one could take the view that photography was not art, which seemed like a transparently defensive move; or one would have to modify long established concepts of what art was supposed to be. The case of Baudelaire is interesting because in a sense he chose both options at once. Baudelaire's opinions on photography were dismissive. In The Salon of 1859, he wrote sardonically that photography had come to fulfil the mob's dream of art as the exact reproduction of nature: "A revengeful God has given ear to the prayers of this multitude. Daguerre was his Messiah." Yet, as Walter Benjamin has shown, in Baudelaire's lyric poetry, photography's challenge to art was replicated in an uncanny way, in that, as in photography, "the disintegration of the aura" unmistakably made itself felt. Even more interesting than the question of photography's relation to art is the question of its relation to power — both in the sense of photography as a powerful mode of representation, and in the sense that it is a mode of representation very much exploited by those in positions of power. Benjamin and Roland Barthes have both written on photography in terms of its relation to power, and it cannot be accidental that both writers see in photography an emancipatory capacity. However, this is a conclusion that is by no means self-evident, nor did Benjamin and Barthes arrive at it by the same route. It may be possible to show that it is through juxtaposing Benjamin and Barthes on photography that a footnote to the theoretical reflection on post-modernism can be added. In the following, I will largely sidestep the question of photography's legitimacy as Art, except to note that the question is not whether photography is art or not, a question which implies already the existence of "essential" art principles; the question is really what art would be if photography could be included in it. This second formulation makes it possible to take the issue of photography out of the realm of pure aesthetics, and to situate it firmly in social and political life, because it assumes that the nature of an art form is inseparable from that art form's inscription in particular cultures and the effect it has on society. Given 92 the minnesota review such a perspective, a necessary preliminary is to examine why so many writers committed to Marxism (with notable exceptions like Benjamin himself and John Berger) have expressed strong reservations about photography. /. Photographic Discourse Brecht's admonitions against photography put the issue cogently: "...less than ever does the mere reflection of reality reveal anything about reality. A photograph of the Krupp works or the A.E.G. tells us next to nothing about these institutions. Actual reality has slipped into the functional . The reification of human relations — the factory, say — means that they are no longer explicit. So something must in fact be built up, something artificial, posed."1 In this critique of photography, Brecht, unlike Baudelaire, is not defending Art against the Mob; quite the contary . Nor does the issue for him revolve around the inability of photography to go beyond the surfaces of the real: Brecht was too astute a theoretician to be dragged down to the profound; i.e. it was not a question of surface versus depth. What bothered Brecht about the photograph was its limited discursivity, its silent complicity with whatever happens to be its subject matter, its stupid mode of signification . Even Benjamin, who made perhaps the most important defense of photography, had harsh words for the "advanced" photographic practice of the day. He pointed out that photography was becoming "ever more nuancé, ever more modern," with the result that "it can no longer depict a tenement block or a refuse heap...