The photographic process: a series of choices, a balance of powers, a multitude of relationships, a statement of liberation, a creative endeavour, an expression of the artists vision. Are we free in the pursuit of this expression? Is this process pure? Honest? Or is it corruptive? What does it do to the human condition? Is the act of making free? Liberating? Painful? We think of artists as relentless figures of forward thinking expression, change agents that speak truth to power and are not afraid to tell the stories that may put themselves in danger. But this expression comes at a cost, and I have started to wonder whether the personal sacrifices artists make are actually worth it. I remember one of my teachers, Donald Weber, once saying he often feels like just working in that book store at the corner. Sometimes I feel like that too because my artistic endeavours are so often close to breaking me in half. And there’s nobody to pick up the pieces after.
It’s as if the thing I’m most passionate about, is also the main source of my pain and suffering.
Perhaps it’s like love. Art has within it both beauty and brutality.
This contradiction, leads to many more.
One of which is the constant balancing of the public persona, consisting of the work, the art, the expression and the private persona, consisting of my family, friends, girlfriend. The connections I make as an individual versus the stories I tell as a photographer. They are inseparable, always informing one another. Everybody has a private and public persona, and often the contrast between the two is enormous. Except, I feel that with artists, the scales have tipped the other way. Usually, the public persona is the one that’s more expressive, a bold display of vanity, the best side of oneself. The private on the other-hand, more considerate, calm, calculating, aimed at sustaining a certain safety of life. I feel that my public persona is the calm, calculating one, the one that bears the burden of self-censorship, and the private parts of my life have ended up being the ones where I really express myself, what I think, what I feel, a sometimes brutal display of honesty. So at times, it feels as if I have failed as a maker, because I keep things to myself, my work is crafted, taking into account the diplomacy of my private persona. Doesn’t the public too deserve the honest version? And am I free to give them that?
What I say is often more honest and truthful than what I show.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of freedom, one that philosophy has circled around for thousands of years. Being an artist starts to put your presumptions about freedom to the test. It starts to challenge your notions of such an abstract concept. Creating art is thought of as a bi-product of a liberated, free soul. The romantic vision of the artist is him being the free spirit, exiled from the rest of society, seeing the world in it’s pure, honest form, able to do this because of his uncorrupted heart. The artist has lost his chains that all the rest of you are bound by. But I call myself an artist and I feel as chained as anyone else. Is that because I’m not worthy of this title? Or because I am the one who chained myself? Karl Marx once wrote in The Communist Manifesto that “you have nothing to loose but your chains.” And although he was referring to the oppression of the masses through the superstructure of capitalism, I see so many things I have to loose if I were to free myself from the shackles. However it’s not just the shackles that are important when we talk about this entrapment. To what are we chained to? Capitalism? Religion? Our political system? Or are we chained to our own morals, our own notions of ethics? Because maybe we need to be chained to something, at least loosely, from time to time? Isn’t complete freedom, total autonomy, just going to cripple us into a constant state of anguish, where every aspect of like needs to be decided, a state in which nothing is pre-determined?
A philosopher that connected to this angst is Jean-Paul Sartre, the most well known existentialist of the 20th century. Sartre first and foremost, argued that existence itself is something that shouldn’t be taken for granted, Sartre did not believe existence was natural. He argued that the world, was before anything else, completely absurd. Nothing has any pre-existing purpose or meaning and as such, where we are now and where we are heading, is completely the result of human choices. Sartre claimed that humans are inherently free, if they so choose to bear the burden of freedom, anything and everything is terrifyingly possible. This is also what is taught to artists: everything is possible, there is no right and wrong, no good and bad, there is only the pursuit of authentic expression. Except authenticity and freedom do not only entail liberation and purity. True freedom is something to be scared off. Sartre argued that humans are mostly living in “bad faith.” A corrupt state of being, in which we are shackled to economic, political or religious structures of power that limit our freedoms with the promise of something better: safety, comfort, ease. Artists are expected to live outside of these norms, we are not supposed to be safe, or comfortable, or at ease. Nothing of value to humanity can be born in such a state. Thus, we must life free of bad faith and accept the inherent freedom that is granted to us through our existence. If we make this choice, we will likely live in what Sartre would describe as the anguish of existence. This state of anguish is the result of loosing ones chains. In this state of anguish everything is terrifyingly possible. And when our existence, our life, is completely defined by the decisions we take anguish is where we end up, because the responsibilities derived from freedom are for most completely unbearable. And this is the problem that artists so very often face, what to do when everything is possible? A world of no restrictions on expression, what do you express, what do you say, what do you claim to be in front of others? The trouble with this freedom that artists are faced with, is that it happens in a society in which most people live in bad faith, thus acts of freedom and honesty are usually condemned by the masses as most people subscribe to predetermined values of morality and social norms. So when an artist chooses to be completely liberated, he puts himself into a position of not just extreme vulnerability but just as easily, a state of danger. As such, this feeling of anguish, can become not only unbearable mentally but also exhausting physically. Life outside the comfort of the bookstore on the corner is not pretty.
Most people do everything to avoid the anguish of existence, but artists must find a way to thrive in it.
The autonomy of the artist.
The romantic view again is that we are free-spirited independent angels blessing the world with new, profound insights. That too, is false. Artist, just like everyone else, exist within a larger structure of society. So even when an artist chooses to claim his freedom and be truly autonomous, the work itself will loose its autonomy as soon as it leaves the studio anyway. It will be handled and modified, bruised and abused by curators, editors, moderators, censors and the lot. Perhaps this is illustrated so beautifully in the 12th edition of the German publication “Der Greif”, where Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin take the role of guest-editors. In this way they are sort of the Gods who choose which artists the public will get to experience, and which not. However, interestingly, through their role of censors, they in fact decided to become more anti-censors than anything else. They announced an open-call, in which they asked artists to submit the kind of images they would deem inappropriate for Facebook, images which they were afraid to share with the world publicly. They then worked together with a moderator who had previously worked at Facebook and sifted through the applications to the publication, and published the works that were deemed inappropriate for use on Facebook. By doing so Broomberg & Chanarin go against the corruptive forces of social media, by making this print publication a stage for work that would otherwise be censored by corporations of bad faith. But the very necessity for such an act of rebellion against the corruptive forces of society, shows us that the autonomy of artists is totally an illusion of our minds, or at very least, a forgotten phenomenon from the past. So do artists have any control over their autonomy at all or is this a lost cause? There’s a certain activism, a rebellious desire that artists who want to be truly autonomous need to have. Perhaps it depends on what we want to achieve. And how hard we are willing to work to be free from living in bad faith. An authentic expression of ones vision into an artwork is one side of the coin, the other, the delivery of said expression to the appropriate audience. If the artist is somehow, through the embrace of complete freedom and ignorance towards social norms and ideas of morality, able to control the other part of the same coin as well, there is hope for autonomy. And this is where the contradiction of the individual vs collective approach becomes interesting. In the creation of work, the artist, to retain his autonomy, must act alone, separated from the corruptive thoughts of other humans, who are probably living in bad faith. However in the delivery of the art piece, this is nearly impossible because presentation of art, is almost always a collaborative endeavour. Even when you take it to the very basics and you control all the other processes, somebody still has to look, interact with your work. If this person is living in bad faith, how can we succeed?
As artists living in anguish, how can we possibly connect to an audience so consumed by power structures of bad faith?
Until now I have allowed a certain hypothesis that the autonomy of the artist in the stage of creation is possible, however I myself have not experienced this autonomy I refer to even in the process of making. Perhaps it’s especially a problem with the medium of photography, as we are often making work about another human, we portray the other, and make judgements based on our observations. For the photographer to be truly autonomous, he must also be a mean, selfish, inconsiderate, egotistical son of a bitch who isn’t one bit interested in maintaining human relationships but rather, only the work itself. I take the opposite approach to being an artist, it is not my primary role in society. I am first a human, a person, a son, a boyfriend, a friend. After that I’m an artist, a photographer, a researcher, storyteller. There is a clear hierarchy to my character. And all elements are no doubt connected, but some are undoubtedly more dominant than others. I do not pursue photography or artistry at the cost of personal relationships. I value the people in my life highly. Therefore, the photography, at times, has to accommodate.
Now, I am telling the story of how my parents first met. It was in 1987, on a train from Tallinn to Moscow, where they would be prepped by the KGB, and coincidentally also Vladimir Putin, to go study in East-Germany. My mum in East-Berlin and my dad in Dresden. Now my parents are divorced, but as a photographer I hear this story and think wow, amazing, I have to tell this, otherwise I might as well quit being a photographer. But as a son I go, this might be tricky, do my parents want to share this with me? They are both re-married now and conversations about the project with both my parents have been at times awkward, and sometimes just plain difficult and hard. People push down hurtful memories of the past, who am I to dig them back up again and put them on display to the public for everyone to scrutinise? Yes, the story would be better, but what kind a son does that to their parents? What is this perverse act of just taking a story from someone’s past and presenting it to an audience? Why the fuck should anyone know about this? What good am I doing to the world by telling this story? I want to, I feel that I almost have to, it’s a story only I can tell and personally I believe everybody deserves for someone to tell their story. But why? What is the point of telling anything? Wouldn’t it be better if I just fucked off to my cave and made some still lives of oh I don’t know my cutlery or something… something that doesn’t have a heart and a soul and emotions and just something that doesn’t give a shit if it is abused? But no, I am an artist after all so I am left with a dilemma. There’s a lot of information in my head, that I know would be great for the story, but I keep finding myself not allowing it to come into the public sphere, even in the classroom or in an essay like this, some elements remain private. And somehow, the story needs to convey the sensitivities I know but cannot say, regardless of whether the page is filled with content, or completely blank.
But sometimes I feel it’s not that I’m loving, or a good son, or care about people, but because as an artist I am corrupted and scared to say what I really want. Perhaps scared more than corrupted. I am aware of my decision to censor, it is a conscious one. The role I take as a son has more worth in my life than the role I take as a photographer. Perhaps if I were to tell a story that isn’t so personal and connected to my own family, I would be more liberated to tell a more raw story.
Why shouldn’t it be scary to piss of your parents? I don’t think I want to tell a story about my parents ever again.
After all I am where I am today because of my parents, the genetics, the way they raised me, the sacrifices they made so that I could afford to focus on the more soul-enriching endeavours, like photography. The two people who I owe everything to are not the ones whose emotions I should fuck around with for the sake of a good story, a successful publication, an increase of vanity received from the photographic community. My parents have been putting food on the table for me since I was born, why do I risk that relationship by telling this story. Shouldn’t I instead just tell them thank you?
To illustrate, why I think I’m taking on the right approach (although I am definitely not sure of it most of the time) we can take a look at Brad Feuerhelm’s article on ASX titled “Antoine d’Agata: Your Dishonesty is the Codex for My Vitriol.” The article can only really be described as a brutal takedown of Antoine d’Agata and his practice. As Feuerhelm describes his past perspective on d’Agata, he writes that “I bought into the idea that universal order is unnecessary and that the only language in photography is the solipsistic and individualistic form”. A couple of sentences later, he continues saying “Given that D’Agata’s performance within his work has much to do with the examination of drugs and sex in the theatre of the human grotesque, I struggle to find answers why anyone gives a fuck and why his work is valorised. The work is about Antoine and yet he needs for the completion of his bruised ego or the fallacy of his “artistic genius” to distribute his po’ boy tortured soul nonsense to the world in broadcast and marketable form, thus limiting my belief in its nihilistic sincerity” and “I’ve done lots of drugs, had a bunch of sex, never have I had any urge to display either or the people that I have done them with in any sort of existential horse shit egocentric diorama for the picture desk.” I think it’s fair to say that Feuerhelm’s perspective regarding the work of Antoine d’Agata has changed over time. What the work of d’Agata really informs me about is what happens when an artist does choose to express himself, outside the realm of “bad faith”. I do believe his work is honest, in terms of the artistic expression, if he made work in any other way, I would question the authenticity of his practice. However, this brutal honesty also shows what kind of a perverse vision the human mind will want to present to the world if it does not tamed by external forces. And I think Feuerhelm’s words that contextualise d’Agata’s work as “the theatre of the human grotesque” is exactly the dilemma that photographers tackle. Imagine a theatre play. The director has a vision. A story to tell. A story about specific people. Real people. Instead of hiring actors to play the roles of the real people, he kidnaps, manipulates and forces the very people the story is about to play the part. That is the practice that photographers are engaged in. D’Agata embraces this method fully, and doesn’t shy away from the brutality of it, but even photographers that are more considerate in the methods of manipulation, the process is nevertheless identical. From this perspective, you can easily make the case that self-censorships is easily the most morally correct approach to making a photographic body of work. Do not show everything, do not tell the whole story. Tell parts, show pieces and let the audience fill the gaps. Be gentle in the manipulation of your actors, do not inflict harm on people. The people depicted in the photographs of d’Agata… you almost forget they are real people, they’ve been put into such an extreme form of vulnerability, they’ve been forever painted onto the pages of artbooks, where sophisticated members of the art community who have are totally unable to relate to their experience, will goggle at their naked, dead and abused bodies, praising the courage of the artist for his raw display of honesty enabled only by the photographic medium. What a load of horse shit these people should be served. Photography is a tool to show things, but perhaps paradoxically, it’s most powerful when some things are left out of the frame, at a distance from the viewer. Photography can either show or it can suggest. And I think suggestions, that engage the audience to think alongside the makers, instead of submitting to the makers, can be much more powerful in informing the audience of the unknown, which we are constantly poking at.
However, it is just as easy to argue the opposite. And that’s why this dilemma will be an eternal one.
As a photographer you also have a responsibility towards your audience, a responsibility to be honest, to tell the truth. Or at least not lie. If you censor your story to preserve the personal relationship with your subjects, do you not betray your audience? Furthermore, the process of censorship encourages a discourse in society that people are not mature enough to hear the story of another, take it in, and instead of judging, making snarky comments or shaming the people in it, they would look, observe, understand and try to relate to the existence of another human. Censorship is necessary when humanity lacks compassion. Because if acts of empathy were more frequent, then I shouldn’t be afraid to share the love story of my parents. It should be something that everyone could rejoice around and learn from. At the same time however, there is a kind of agreement in society, that more or less is never debated about, and t hat is that everyone is entitled to a certain level of privacy. So just as Facebook and Google are stealing all of your data without you being aware of it, photographers too are most of the time working in their studios, telling other peoples stories for them, ripping them from their right to privacy. The subjects we work with ultimately are at the mercy of the decisions of the photographers. And sometimes we adopt a more cooperational approach, and at times we are just brutally telling stories that are not ours to tell.
But still, how do you balance the desire to tell people a good story and the commitment you make to your family to be a good son? Because we take these roles seriously, the role of being a son, the role of being a boyfriend, when I tell a story about my parents or my girlfriend or anyone else that is close to me, how do I do that? How uncomfortable am I allowed to make them? It’s a paradox, because these are the people that I want to hurt the least, yet they are also the people that will allow me to hurt them the most. They will not seek to set clear boundaries, they will allow me to intrude on their private space because they love me as well, they trust me that in the end I will respect their story. But how do I ensure I really do that? Can I really ensure that I do that? And at times I feel like I should just be brutal, and tell the story I want to tell, because to not tell their story because of their desire to be portrayed in a certain way, their lust for vanity or sometimes the opposite, an insistence on privacy… in the end who cares? Stories are sometimes more for the makers to tell than the audience to consume. We need it so we can live, the audience will see it, maybe it will move a few people, perhaps a couple will even remember the project, but mostly it will exist, be occasionally observed, and then be forgotten again into the mass of cultural production we find ourselves living in. There’s so much being made nowadays, what is there to even be embarrassed off anymore?
I think in the end, and as I’ve written this, I come to realise that what I’m really writing about is the anguish of existence that Sartre described. Perhaps I am more free than I thought I was, and my commitment to freedom is illustrated by the struggles and dilemmas that come along with it. Rene Descartes’ “Cogito, ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am) related to this. Perhaps struggle, the questioning, the difficulty is a symptom of a free-spirit, an autonomous artist. If everything were clear and straightforward I would not be capable of such reflections, I would be stuck living in bad faith. But it would be so much easier, so much more comfortable and safe. I still long for that sometimes, that feeling of safety, of just knowing it will all be fine, and not having to worry. I long being able to sleep at night without these thoughts running through my mind. And I hate being being angry because I feel like I am betraying my family. Or sad and on the verge of tears as my mum is keeping me awake as she tells me about the stresses of living in the Soviet Union. I see how broken it made her. And ironically I also see how strong that made me. Perhaps that’s what it is all about, I wouldn’t call it destiny because I don't believe in such nonsense. But maybe…. maybe there is something to the serendipity that has been my family, my life so far. My parents could never have told stories like this, so could it be that I must? Not because it’s commanded my some supreme being from the skies, but as a sign of respect for my parents, for the previous generation that had to endure real censorship, not the self inflicted kind. It might be difficult for my parents to see it from this perspective, but in many ways, my work also becomes a thank you for them, for putting the food on the table, for making sure that I am able to pursue the freedom that pushes me to tell these stories. Perhaps it's bittersweet, as this freedom I pursue is sometimes painful for them, but I hope that the pursuit of it nevertheless makes them proud. Such a cliche thing, wanting to make your parents proud. Maybe that’s the biggest balancing act of all… creating the life you want for yourself and trying to make your parents proud in the process.