DUANE
MICHALS (U.S., 1932),
RALPH
GIBSON (U.S., 1939)
Immanent figurality
After the program of radicalisation
and conceptualization of 1950-1975, it was only natural that photographers
should thematize one of the basic characteristics of photography, its propensity
to extricate figures. This propensity is so strong that we saw it as soon as
1865 with Margaret Cameron. At this occasion, we had briefly defined the
notion. We must insist.
The figure is not the form.
According to a strict vocabulary, the form belongs to the living and to technical
objects. A resting or hunting lion has a natural form. A table constructed or
under construction has a technical form. A forest is partially a natural form
and a technical form.
A figure is therefore the representation
of a form by contours and major articulations. We say a geometric ‘figure’.
Insofar as the figure extricates, essentalizes, abstracts the structure of a
form (formae figura, says the Latin). Hence understood, the figure is not
straight, at a distance, taken out of time, congealed, taken out of any precise
causality. Yet, in the same time, it is also virtual, bloated with possibles,
prophetic (Pascal’s ‘figures’ of Christ), filled with omen and numen (nodding of the head/shaking of the
head, by which Zeus took his unpredictable decisions in relation with the
concrete forms of daily life). A door or a corridor – with something that
moves back or forth slowly – is a figure in this last sense. A central
mass between two smaller masses (the man between the two beasts of
Baltrusaitis) is also a figure, and not only a referential sign of the triad,
domination, mediation, etc. A form viewed in a mirror looses its volume, and
particularly its mass, it leans in turn towards the figure. Sexual positions in
the Indian temple of Khajuraho are figures more than forms.
Photography, and this is a
singularity, has an acquaintance with figures. A literary text can speak of figures;
it is rare that it is one itself, except through dispositions that are usually
beyond the listener and the reader. Bach’s music is also filled with multiple
figures, but again they are only accessible to the initiated. Traditional
painting, proceeding from stroke to stroke under the drive of a hand and a
brain, would almost fatally engender not figures but forms. And if Magritte is
often figural, is it not because, also being an advertiser, he thought
photographically? Indeed, photography works through the contrast of shadows and
light. Since these are produced all at once, the framing often groups single
panes that have the abstraction, detachment, and therefore the ‘ominous’ and
‘numunous’ strength of figures. On the other hand, photography, without being a
mirror, has some of its qualities of thinness and timelessness, where massive
and substantial forms quickly change into virtually figural working drawings.
In 1865, with Margaret Cameron, figures still largely belonged to WORLD 2, hence swirling into allegory: the two kissing children in The Double Star represent a double star, as the title warns us. On the other hand, the characters we met with Ueda and Suda, outlined and
sampled by their non-mediatizing arabesque, if there was anything figural about
them, it was by presupposing, as always in Japan, a grasping-construction
through functioning elements, meaning WORLD 3.
We resolutely enter WORLD 3 with the
figurality of Duane Michals and Ralph Gibson, who each take though completely
opposite directions.
1. From form to figure: Duane Michals
Generally, photographers do not make
theories. And even when they do, they do not explain their reasoning point by
point. This is not Duane Michal’s case, as he practices a narration in images,
whose photos are usually accompanied by accompanying texts that are ‘figural’
like the images, and archetypical like those in photo romances. In a word, we
only need to follow him. And this is what we are going to do, leafing through
the suite of stories he assembled in ‘Photo Poche’, whose selection and order
are of the greatest importance. There is no pagination, which will force us to
mention the title every time, not a bad thing.
He starts with a six-page declaration of homosexuality: Fortuitous Meeting. Then, he gives the most evident plastic consequence of the homosexual situation as he lives it, the transformation of meaningful forms into figures, and particularly into glorious figures. This is what happens to his Andy Warhol in three images, whose face first offers a form that is already double, lived in by another form, to the point that it blurs into the second image and
fades away in the third until it achieves a glorious illumination, as we say a
Christ in glory, a pure figure.
One finds a being-itself-and-other
in homosexuality, something that Proust described at length, where every
perception and every imagination are also itself-and-others in multiple or
indefinite superimpositions that are not devoid of ecstasy. Yet, the figurality
provoking ecstasy can be contained in a subtle luminescence – as we
usually encounter with Proust – or violent, such as the light that struck
Roland Barthes in some of Racine’s characters. Duane Michals encounters this
vivacious glory, this striking by lightning, and not solely in his photograph
of Andy Warhol, the saint. The Human Condition shows us how, on the platform of a train
station, a beautiful young man can – in six images – transform himself
into a nebulous spiral. Illuminated Man (*PP) resumes the striking glorification in
one sole detached photograph that, for this Christian – specifically
catholic – homosexuality, is consonant with the transfigured Christ,
ultimate object of identification, in Christ in New York.
However, we will note that, for this
striking, glory is partly related to the screen. Another Andy Warhol concluding the volume shows us his face, hidden behind his long hands, another figure. Similarly, we must note
that, insofar at it strikes, glory is both life and death, as La mort vient
à la vielle dame shows us to the point of provoking the question: ‘how can I be dead?’ in Le voyage de l’esprit après la mort. Finally, in this Christian context, the entire game of being-itself-and-other is not guiltless, and the figure
of mire becomes, after the intercourse, the figure of the repenting man in L’Ange
Déchu. In any event, we should never dichotomise: glory or eclipsing; light or disappearance; triumph or sin. But replacing the or by the and. The homosexual practice of the inclusive disjunction privileges the Acrobats, in a group and by twos in particular (PP). Besides, it is the and-and
that pushes Duane Michals to the narration in multiple images – as Jean
Genêt was pushed to the theatre – or more exactly into ceremony. Unless
one single photograph – for instance that of the lesbians in Certain
words must be said, where one is the figure of the towards-the-inside and the other is the figure of the towards-the-outside – is intrinsically double. Like
glorifications.
We easily see how this passage from
form to figure could or should call upon photography. Through his successive
exhibitions, the latter facilitates superimpositions. Glory is achieved at best
through solarisation. Particularly the way in which the shooting can – at
leisure – bring the object closer or further or turn it top/bottom,
back/front, committing it to every metamorphose. In Take One (a pill) and See Mt. Fujiyama, the woman standing out as a global
form in a window frame in a first while, figuralizes in low angle shot,
inflates at great angle, turns around – still as figuraly – then becomes
a figure of oppression and night, then a glimmer on which the figure of the
Mount Fuji stands, as it prosaically comes back to finish off the form of the
masculine underwear erected: form > figure(s) > form. In a word, figural
photography can promise Paradise Regained to some form of homosexuality, which is something
that the cinema would be quite incapable of doing, as it does not proceed to a
succession of immobilities, but by a sequence of movements.
Usually, in Duane Michals’ work, superimpositions,
over-expositions and variations of angle are at the service of his own figures.
Yet, in the portraits, they are also capable of functioning at the service of
other figures, like that of the very figural yet very heterosexual Magritte. In
the work of the latter, the figurality is not the result of evanescence but of the
frontal over-density of forms, like that of the bowler hat, incapable of
communicating because of their density itself. In 1965’s Portrait of René
Magritte (**PP, or Life, Themes. 115), we shall leave the reader deduct from the Magritian figures: frank reflections before a mirror; transparencies, but within the strict frame of an easel; scenarity, but defined by curtains whose pleats are tensed in ionic striations;
multiple poses, but that are systematically decided, etc. And we shall suspect
how many adaptations must have taken place between the portraitist and the
portrayed.
2. From figure to form: Ralph Gibson
Ralph Gibson follows the opposite path to Duane Michals. With Gibson, we never go uphill from the form to the figure, the form ensues from the figure, which itself ensues of the
photographic frame as a physical departure data. To illustrate this deduction,
we reproduced Bergamo 1987 (***CP, 138) and Stomy Brook 1987 (****CP, 117). The enumeration that follows is not only pedagogical, but it belongs to the essence of the reasoning.
(A) The photographic frame as such is the figure of figures,
the original ‘numen’ and ‘omen’, with its physico-chemical limitation that decides
yes/no, like Zeus, a portion of space from an absolute cut-out, sacraly
separating it from any other space and any other time (se-cernere is a possible
etymology of ‘sacred’). (B) With each click of the camera, light and shadow
– since we are in the field of photography – come and settle here,
before any determination, before even being day or night. (C) Through the
encounter of the composure frame and the light/shade couple, vertical lines
tend to affirm themselves on horizontals, seeing the system – optically and kinaesthetically – privileged by the standing primate with its gravitation and
counter-gravitation indexed from bottom to top and its cerebral and physical
asymmetry from the right and the left. (D) Among the resultants of these
forces, the distinct and the confuse can emerge figuraly with the hard and the
soft like all the great topological parties, meaning the RATES of close/far,
open/closed, encompassing/encompassed, penetrating/penetrated, compact/diffuse,
sharp/obtuse, or still pleats, gathers, etc. (E) In the meeting of general or
differential topology with gravitation the lineaments of geometry of proportion
articulates (Euclidean-Cartesian). The stud is the frame or the 35 mm format
through its proximity of the golden number, invites to a distribution according
to the gold section, harmonious relationship where great is to small like the
sum of the two is to the great. (F) Finally, ‘things’ (causae, causes) begin to
become defined, hence the bunch of operating relations in course of
objectalisation and nomination. The hard-clear and soft-floating have become a
hard-neat spine and a soft-floating hand, or elsewhere a soft hand on a hard
support (CP, 117). But the later the better, since each has stayed, as long as
possible, non-mediatised, irreferable, irrefutable, immense, without measure.
We must go back to Vision, which we quoted before with
Giacomelli. After having proposed the computational steps that, from the retinal
data lead to the perception of a three-dimensional object (object centred),
David Marr asks himself how the hence-perceived object could still be named,
hence situated in classes of objects. He proposes that this classification
should be operated through a reference to an ideal cylinder whose amount of
segments and the proportions between the segments characterise the object.
According to this point of view, Italian Giacomelli and American Gibson
complete each other. If we take as a starting point the moment of the object perceived
at three-dimensions (object centred), Giacomelli would take us upstream at this stage – which are at most of 2.5 dimensions (viewer centred). Gibson, on the other hand, would have us come downstream according to the progressive specifications of the cylinder of nominative reference, but would stop us just before the completed nomination.
This is for the epistemological aspect. And, indeed, instead of being signs, Gibsonian objects, which remained figural, would hence keep their statute of stimuli-signs, human correspondents
of the stimuli-signals in the animal world. This is the case of a shoe (CP,
118), a collar (CP, 117), an anus-flower-star-eye (CPJ07). Whereby –
probably – this sort of (immediate) amazement caused by Gibson.
The main thing, when looking at these photographs, is not going down too quickly, we should go down as slowly as possible the suite of steps that go from the frame with its ‘ominous’ and
‘numinous’ virtualities, to the denomination of particular objects. Hence, it
would be an unfortunate precipitation to immediately see and name in the photo New
York 1974 (CP, 136) two women faces, one three-quarters and the other being a profile, one in the light, the other in the shade. In the special issue of the Cahiers de la
Photographie that we are referring to, this photo was judiciously published across from the Bergamo 1984 (CP, 137), whose similitude is blatant although different classes are modularised : ‘bottle’, ‘window’, etc.
Through this similitude in difference, we could not grasp better the general suite that
is shared everywhere: frame > shadow/light > vertical/horizontal >
hard/soft > etc. according to the deduction produced above. And it would be
an equally abusive precipitation to reduce the Gibsonian device to a fetishist
or homosexual fantasmatization under the pretext that the mouth or the sexual
organs are almost always erased by the shadow (CP, 130) or by an excessive
clarity (CP, 132), or still, displaced in the Freudian sense in a lunar
sublimation (CP, 126).
We understand Gibson’s attachment to Italy. Because figurality as he practices it finds his ancestors in Pisanello, Mantegna, Signorelli, Angelico, Piero di Cosimo particularly in the goldsmith-headwear of the Simonetta, to which an implication is perhaps made explicitly (CP, 122). The parallel to which we were forced with Giacomelli confirms this acquaintance. As Swiss Robert Frank was taken aback by America more than any American was, American
Gibson is taken aback more by Italy than any European native. A photographic
subject is above all a question of amazement.
note : FIGURES MATHÉMATIQUES ET FIGURES PLASTIQUES
Ralph Gibson declares the implication between figures and index (vs indicum), or indexations. To conclude, would figures not be these forms where the index-indexations, empty referential signs (without determined referent) would be prevalent? Do they not supply the tangible element of mathematics, which are the practice of the general coordination of index (or best, of indexations), i.e. pure signs of direction (Euclidean geometrization), of succession (ordinality) and collection-repetition (cardinality)?
In truth, the plastic figure overlaps the mathematic figure since, as Bergamo
1987 warns us (***CP, 138). It comprises the (top/bottom) gravitation and the (right/left)
laterality in a ‘physical’ manner, which sends back to Physics. The ‘to the
left’ and ‘to the right’ of the mathematician are only oppositives, structuralists
in the narrow sense. Many experimental studies on the plastic phenomenon are ineffective
because they do not take into account the ‘physical’ gravitation of the forms
and figures perceived.
Henri Van Lier
A photographic history of photography
in Les Cahiers de la Photographie, 1992
List of abbreviations of common references:
PP: Photo Poche,Centre National de la Photographie, Paris.
CP: Special issue of “Cahiers de Photographie” dedicated to the relevant photographer.
The acronyms (*), (**), (***) refer to
the first, second, and third illustration of the chapters, respectively. Thus,
the reference (*** AP, 417) must be interpreted as: “This refers to the third
illustration of the chapter, and you will find a better reproduction, or a
different one, with the necessary technical specifications, in The Art of
Photography listed under
number 417”.