07 - FAMILY COMMENT
Plato Rivellis: I took this photo from my family album. It's a photo that connects me with my childhood and may also be a part of my memory. Why I fear, Andreas, that people have childhood memories that we are not sure if they are truly memories or are conveyed through the photos we found in the family drawer. Anyway, this so-called commemorative photo has elements of art in the sense that it connects the person who took it with money, with time, with emotion, with the emotion of time.
Andreas Pagoulatos: How does Plato define the photo of social comment? Or better of the familiar space?
PR: With the word family comment, with the words rather family comment we do not mean the photo I referred to before, namely the commemorative one. We refer to what constitutes the surroundings of the photographer. His house, his family, his personal life, his world, himself. In contrast to all the things that are just the outside world. And this photo has a relationship, a starting point in the commemorative photo. We are particularly interested because in recent years it has experienced a surge, a preference from photographers.
AP: In this case, what are the limits of the familiar space, the personal space? Since we know that almost always a photo and especially a good photo captures along with the photographed objects that ultimately become photographed and elements from the photographer's interiority.
PR: Your observation about the photographed world reminds me of a similar and relevant phrase by Winogrand that does not concern only of course today's broadcast but all of photography. He says, therefore, photography does not talk about the world but talks about the photographed world. This has within it the concept of transformation that photography brings, that art brings. That is, a painting is a painted world, just as photography has created a new photographed world. In this regard, indeed, all external elements even the third ones, outside the photographer's world, through photography take part, become heroes of his personal world. Anyway, a photographer expresses himself from the moment he presses the button whatever he does. Whatever his intention may be. However, there is a particular significance and difference in trying to create the elements of your personal world starting from your real own world. Your surroundings, your city, your life, your very soul.
AP: The familiar, the personal moments, when they are publicized or shared through photography, isn't there a greater risk of standardization for the photographer?
PR: This risk exists anyway. And indeed, in this area of home photography or photographs of the familiar environment, such cases have been observed. That is, to standardize the idea of familiarity and for the photographer to lose spontaneity in front of the lyceum. But this is a more general problem of photography and not only in this specific area of family photos. Social photography can be equally standardized. In the advertising slogan. The familiar space presents other difficulties. That it is very well known. And here comes the question that we may have already asked, does the known help the photographer? In this case, the familiar space is not just known it is the photographer himself.
AP: Yes, and another question that comes to mind spontaneously is, how to photograph something that you live, but also the opposite; How to live something that you photograph?
PR: The problem is rather how to photograph what you live. There you need to maintain the conviction that the world is a theater and that you are just watching it. And to be able to pull yourself a little out of those things that make up your surroundings.
AP: Photos of their familiar environment and their personal moments in some cases were also made by the pioneers, de Vasson and Lartigue. In their time. What do you think are the main stylistic differences between those photos and today's photos of the familiar space?
PR: Maybe they are not stylistic. But they are differences of substance. They did not have the risk of falling into the trap you mentioned earlier, of standardization. Because they did not do family photography in the broadest sense that we gave, to escape from another photography. They did it very close to the commemorative. The very nice thing with these first photographers is that they still had the innocence, the warmth, and the curiosity that the photographic camera brings either as a machine or as a tool with which it captures time. Today's photography that turns to their familiar space does so as a reaction to a social photography with which they were possibly tired but which also had not given anything new and mainly there was no hope that it could bring some social change that some photographers had in mind. Therefore, social photography went bankrupt within quotation marks, a family photography was revived whose risks are to be standardized and to become a concept, to become a notion.
The photograph in the joy of Jenny de Vasson but it does not seem that it had also won her appreciation. This event, however, is due to our acquaintance with her photographic production. She decided shortly before her death to destroy the samples of her poetic and painting creation as unworthy to remain immortal. However, she allowed her photographic testimonies to survive since the investment she had made on them did not represent the significance of the other artistic means that had occupied her life. We were thus able, astonished, to find out that just at the turn of the century, a hostess of provincial France photographing like a new Cameron her intimates made work, style, and opinion around the photography that many after her would have to envy. Her difference from Cameron of course lies in the handling of her themes. The theatricality and the romantic element gave their place to the pioneering perception of descriptive accuracy and formalistic search. The aesthetic and artistic interest of family depiction was about to occupy our contemporary theorists It is already in the work of this enigmatic and intelligent creator who first organized the details of her everyday images into a visual poetic diary of time.
The great photographer of the early century Jacques Henri Lartigue is not part of currents or schools. He simply presents us only about deceptive simplicity. Because Lartigue brings us back to the sources of photography when the locking of time was the power and purpose of it. Lartigue is a collector of moments happy or comic since he did not want to retain in his memory moments of sadness. And he secures them in his personal diary never to see them again. Lartigue was fortunate to have parents not only wealthy but also playful. Thus, he was encouraged from a young age to entertain himself with all sorts of discoveries and games. His first photos he made at the age of six and very quickly found himself driving a car and airplane. This carefreeness of his childhood and the belle epoque he wanted to keep with his images. Only that almost automatically thanks to his intelligence but also the artistic upbringing he received from early on these images without losing the freshness and spontaneity that generated them were dressed in excellent photographic forms To excite us and to convince us that art can be hidden in our everyday life.
AP: In the photos of the familiar space and personal moments let's say it like this, doesn't the photographer more directly turn into a director photographer?
ΠΡ: My opinion is that he necessarily becomes a director photographer. It is not at all certain that when you photograph your children you will direct more than a person who is opposite you. What is certain is that the given feelings you have towards your children, towards your wife, towards your house will enter the photo thus they risk dragging it easier than when you photograph in a foreign space which only the external elements are a motive for photography. (14:05) If your photo is only dragged by emotional elements, in the best case you will make a good commemorative.
AP: I am surprised and charmed by the photos of Meatyard. Because I see how starting from a limited universe, that of his house, his yard, his town, he manages to expand exactly with photographic means this universe. He makes it huge, unlimited. And continuously He invents new forms. Which exactly respond to the need to enrich this space. This limited universe of his.
PR: Meatyard can teach us a lot about photography. First of all, that a photographer needs to put a space within which he moves. To limit the chaos of the world and the themes that concern him. Very logically Meatyard with the modest life he lived set the limits of his small town, His house where he gathered on the weekend with his family, his children, his friends, his neighbors. Within it, after he limited his ambition within quotation marks he expanded his photographic ambition. He could now play unlimitedly with this specific space and search the limits now of photography undisturbed. If you leave the limits of your subject And the limits of your interest so unlimited necessarily you must limit the searching of photography otherwise you will get lost. We thus see Meatyard alternating the experiments and concerns around the image both content and form working only with his children, his wife, and a familiar environment. Another element that Meatyard brings to my mind and is very interesting to me personally, is the element of the amateur. His profession was given, he was an optician. He worked only on weekends, the other days he was in his shop and even in his shop he hung photographs as a continuous exhibition. There are even testimonies and children from neighboring universities who studied photography and their teacher took them by bus to see the Meatyard exhibition at the optical store somewhere in Kentucky. But on weekends he became a photographer. where do the limits of the amateur stop and where do the limits of the professional begin?
An unknown optician from Kentucky, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Became the model of the artist photographer of Sunday. Because Meatyard the hours he did not spend in his store he dedicated to building a fairytale photographic world with heroes his wife, his children, and his friends. Meatyard experimented with the photographic medium perhaps as much as anyone else nowadays both in the content area and in the form. His effort to create his unreal world led him to the most extreme studies of motion and the most daring thematic conceptions. He remained absolutely photographic thus offering an invaluable service to the photographic medium since he proved that the visuality and surrealism of photography will remain inescapably tied with the dimension of time and reality. A time that was measured sparingly by the fate of his life. Fate however that he again tried to face with the medium of photography which he believed capable of deceiving time. And thus he left us an inheritance of hope and motion a last greeting the three last photos That were found locked in his camera after his death.
AP: A phrase of Meatyard comes to mind that says that, I am generally a philosopher. And I think that exactly through the overturning each time of the given of his work with the passion he has for the renewal of his work and photography in general and also searching for his contemporary literature, The poetry, the prose Analyzing his essays by Sartre as some testimonies tell us he gradually acquires a more general view of the world and his work. He becomes almost a philosopher as he says himself. It is very characteristic how a person who lives in this way expands the limits of his unlimitedly also through the art of his photography.
PR: Always thinking of Meatyard, to escape again from photography, his last three photos, those that he left in his camera the week he died and which he knew he would die because he has cancer, which are photos of escape. He himself moves away and gets lost and leaves it to us as a memory, as a pledge. They take me to the function of art As very metaphorically gave it in a short story by the French writer Marguerite Yourcenar which I will misrepresent and convey to our viewers, an emperor in China admired very much a painting, a topography that a old painter had made. He called him however to his palace and told him I will kill you because this painting torments me because I cannot accept real life. But before I kill you I want you to finish it because you have left it unfinished. And the painter continued to paint the sea, on which he painted a boat he got into the boat got lost and was saved. Thus this transfer of how the humble if we want life of a Meatyard in a small village can be transformed and become a means of transportation into a dream life through photography, through any art is something that enchants me. But what you say that he is generally a philosopher, but a person is all together, that is, photography is just the medium he finds to express his sensitivity. That's why you see me so hesitant every time we have categories to categorize people by genus, gender, tendency, form, photographic method, and so on.
AP: Would you now like to talk a little about the also very interesting case of Sally Mann?
PR: Sally Mann Is a provocatively new and successful case that no one would expect. She photographed her children in a risky way, that is quite emphasized sensually, with impeccable formalism, with a large camera, with tremendous technical quality, and created a fresh, a mural of family photography men, images of children, possibly a grandmother, garden, and so on. A kind of Alice in Wonderland. Fairy but And quite coarse. Surprisingly, she was successful. I mean successful in the world. Surprisingly I say it because the world does not realize that you can photograph your children and this can be interesting for someone else. I will not forget the very funny phrase that the mother of an American photographer said to her son, my child I do not understand why you photograph people you do not know; It is characteristic that in the photo exhibition landscapes are sold much easier than people. Because it is a bit strange to have in your house the photo of a child who is not your relative. However, this family photo has also a so-called commercial success, it was sold as a photo. And it is also an interesting novelty in the field of photography.
A few years ago a young American woman Sally Mann knows very well the use of large machines and tried to leave the first photographic traces of her dream world discovered the charm and sensuality of childhood and adolescent age. She began photographing her three small children and ended up with a work that impressed, charmed but mainly surprised critics and the public. Her images are interesting because they contain contradiction. They are not limited to the conceptual transformation of family, traditional, Iconography into a work of art. Sally Mann uses only as a reference the parental images to generate surprise with the morphological handling of her photographs that more refer to carefully staged fairy tales rather than snapshots of family life while at the same time bringing face to face the childlike carefreeness and tenderness with the unknown, the harshness, the mystery, and the sensuality that also accompany the child presence.