The corner of the room is dark, a shaft of blue light shines in through the curtains. A table lamp illuminates a wooden table. On the back wall is an orange glow emanating from a manger.
We are looking down on someone laying on a sofa, staring up into the blue light. He has his back turned to a bible that is opened on the edge of the table. A tether hangs motionless over the top edge of the manger, a short distance from the ground. A bridle is hooked from a vertical beam on the back wall. A black and white photograph above the manger depicts a horse and plough.
The expression on his face is ambiguous. There is a glint of uncertainty in his eye. His shirt collar is unbuttoned and his tie is pulled down to one side. He is unshaven and looks troubled. He has turned his back on the bookmarked page containing ‘I will trust and not be afraid’ (Isaiah. 12:2). A number of hand made bookmarks are scattered across the brick floor. They are written in the hand of a child.
My image is a constructed self-portrait. It is only when writing here that I re-acquaint myself with the lyrics of Michael Stipe, “That’s me in the corner. That’s me in the spot-light, losing my religion.“, from the album Out of Time. (REM, 1991). Is this image recording the moment I lost my religion or had I already lost it? Had it lost me? Or am I searching for it again?
Although my idea originated from the manger as a religious motif the primary subject of the final image is not religion, believer or non-believer. It is demonstrating the human condition of getting older, nostalgic looks to the past and questioning the point of working just to acquire possessions. Opening the bible is just another step in trying to find an answer and make sense of life.
This ambiguity is the strength of images such as Gregory Crewdson’s Cathedral of the Pines (Crewdson, 2017) and Beneath the Roses (Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters, 2012). He has a feeling for locations and scenes. The situations are in his memory, an unconscious thought. It is a feeling he has inside which he wants to externalise. Like most artists, whether painters, photographers or musicians, very few want to give away the answer to their creations/questions.
My use of the blue spotlight and my ambiguous expression are my attempt at adding a psychological feel à la Gregory Crewdson. The bible, inscribed by my late Grandmother in 1975, is not only a religious motif but also a personal reminder of my childhood, and my early years at Sunday School. My aim is not to take a position on religion one way or the other. It is a reference to friends and family who have turned to religion for strength.
Although the immediate messages conveyed by the image relate to religion, another message I wanted to convey was of ‘work’. I am dressed in my office work clothes at the end of a long hard day. The heavy bridle hanging on the wall used by a workhorse ploughing the field. A photograph on the wall capturing the farmer and his horse working the soil. This is another nostalgic look in to the past but also conveys the never ending repetitive cycle of hard work. The farmer and horse have long since passed.
The tether is deliberately placed hanging above the ground. It would normally be firmly on the ground, keeping whatever is attached to the other end in place. Its use in my image not only represents a heavy weight bearing down, but also, by use of the shadow, connotes hanging.
The objective of this single image is to incorporate a story but have enough layers to not be obviously about one thing and open to a certain amount of interpretation. I also wanted it to be aesthetic so I used a cinematic device employed by Philip-Lorca diCorcia. He doesn’t look through the camera, it is not at his height. “It’s part of the reason people describe my work as cinematic. It’s a third-person point of view; not looking through the camera also makes me kind of disappear”. (DiCorcia, 2007: 94)
I have used these devices to create a narrative but there is no end or conclusion within it. I have combined a modernist ‘what is in the frame’ approach alongside an ‘external’, post-modernist element. Writers, theorists and critics have discussed and argued over these two styles for many years. In my view neither is right or wrong. Geoffrey Batchen has assessed this in great detail in his book ‘Burning with Desire’. (Batchen, 1997).
Batchen’s approach in his book is to look at the emergence of photography and the proto-photographers who all attempted to define what photography was. He then moves on to the various camps of modernism and post-modernism discussing ‘nature’ and ‘culture’. Does my image fall in to Nature or Culture? It is mainly ‘nature’ but there are ‘culture’ elements in the form of psychological and philosophical concepts.
Using Barthes’ attributes of studium and punctum (Barthes, 1980), my view is that the punctum is down to the viewer. What might be a striking anomaly or poignant item to one viewer will differ from another. Jacques Derrida (1981) felt that the two work together. They are not opposites. They co-exist. (Batchen, 1997:193). The hanging tether, for example, may be seen as being incorrectly placed to some but this was intentional as a sinister device.
The co-existence of opposites is an interesting observation in a world that is dominated by binary choices: vote to stay or leave; right and wrong; good or bad. No nuance or middle ground. Art images, however, do not necessarily have to be instantly liked or disliked, although they often are. Even if they initially are passed over as uninteresting, they are still available to be returned to once the viewer has broadened their knowledge and has more life experiences.
List of Illustrations:
Figure 1. Rainbird, M. (2018) ‘Out of Time’ [photograph] In: possession of: The author: Witham.
References:
Barthes. R (1980) Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, trans. Howard, R. New York: Hill and Wang.
Batchen. G (1997) Burning With Desire. Massachesettes: MIT Press.
Crewdson. G, (2017) Cathedral of the Pines. [exhibition]. London: Photographer’s Gallery. 23 June – 08 October 2017
DiCorcia. P-L. (2007) ‘Interview with Philip-Lorca DiCorcia’. Interviewed by Lynne Tillman. In: Simpson, B. (2007) Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Germany: Steidl
Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters (2012) Directed by Shapiro, B. [DVD] New York: Zeitgeist Films
Isaiah 12: 2. In: The Holy Bible. London: Collins. p. 609.
REM (1991) Losing My Religion. In: Out Of Time. New York: Warner Bros Inc.
Bibliography:
Howarth, S (2005) Singular Images: Essays on Remarkable Photographs. London: Tate.
Rainbird, M (2018) Gregory Crewdson. At: https://ocamartynrainbirdcan.wordpress.com/2018/03/17/gregory-crewdson/ (Accessed 05/04/2018)
Rainbird, M (2018) Teun Hocks. At: https://ocamartynrainbirdcan.wordpress.com/2018/03/23/teun-hocks/ (Accessed 05/04/2018)
Rainbird, M (2018) Religion and religious motifs in art photography. At: https://ocamartynrainbirdcan.wordpress.com/2018/04/02/religion-and-religious-motifs-in-art-photography/ (Accessed 05/04/2018)
Rainbird, M (2018) Assignment 5: On Location. At: https://ocamartynrainbirdcan.wordpress.com/2018/04/02/assignment-5-on-location/ (Accessed 05/04/2018)
Rainbird, M (2018) Assignment 5: Contact Sheets and Edit. At: https://ocamartynrainbirdcan.wordpress.com/2018/04/03/assignment-5-contact-sheets-and-edit/ (Accessed 05/04/2018)
Martyn Rainbird 