First Draft of Essay

Examine How Structuralism Influences the Visual Interpretation of an Image

“Nothing is ever fully present in signs. It is an illusion for me to believe that I can ever be fully present to you in what I say or write, because to use signs at all entails that my meaning is always somehow dispersed, divided and never quite at one with itself, not only my meaning but I can never have a pure, unblemished meaning at all”

Quote by Jaques Derrida Wells. L (2003: 168)

Image “Duet” Penny Davies (2012)

It is my intention to examine how Structuralism influences the interpretation of the image, using photographs from my own practice, and the art of the Abstract Expressionist painters, the photographer Uta Barth and film maker Tacita Dean (or artist David Hockney). I will analyse the methods by which the viewer is encouraged to encounter the visual image, by investigating the theories of Ferdinand du Saussure and Claude Levi Strauss, and post- structuralists Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes. The visual interpretation of an image is limited by the viewer’s social and political experience, perception, expectations and assumptions.

“Structuralism is the theory of language and knowledge. It is allied with the theory of semiotics. Things in the world – literary texts and images do not wear their meanings on their sleeves. They must be deciphered, or decoded, in order to be understood. Things have a “deeper structure” than common sense permits us to comprehend, and structuralism purports to provide a method that allows us to penetrate that deeper structure.”

Wells. L (2003:166)

The “Duet” is from a body of work that began as an exploration of memory, and the connections between myself, and the inherited family objects that link my past and my present. The important aspects of this work for me, is the role that the camera plays, and the silence in which I photograph the space at home, where I have now succeeded in achieving the images I want to exhibit. It is in the silence that I see with my heart. The silence holds no distraction, my mind is allowed to release itself from all thought; it is in silence that I feel at one with my camera, my surroundings and myself. This is important to me because it is my heart that intuitively perceives what my mind can only see, and my camera can only look at.

The Camera is my tool. Through it I give reason to everything around me”

Andre Kertesz Sontag. S (2000:207)

My camera plays an integral role in my life. It has become a part of me that documents and records aspects of my life. It is the tool I use to express visually what would otherwise remain lost to me.  My camera demystifies my thoughts and emotions. It has become my friend and ally. I can take a photograph intuitively, but it is not until I see the image that I understand its meaning. The importance of the camera has changed as I have progressed with my art. At first it was a learning instrument, an object I could hide behind. It became a friend that I relied on to develop my skills and abilities; now it has become my passion, part of me that I miss if it is not there. The camera and I have become as one.

 “The camera is a fluid way of encountering that other reality” Jerry N Uelsmann Sontag (2000:200).

It is important to me, that in my photography, the visual experience is shared with the viewer. Photography for me is theatrical; there is always an emotion in its depths. The Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko said that “nothing should stand between my painting and viewer.” He resisted attempts to interpret his paintings. He was mainly concerned with the viewer’s experience, the merging of work and recipient beyond verbal comprehension. “Explanation must come out of a consummated experience between picture and onlooker. The appreciation of art is a true marriage of minds.” Teshuva (2003:7). His work is a drama that unfolds slowly as it is viewed. This is what I am trying to achieve in my art. Wassily Kandinsky, from the same art period, said that his art “embodies both the senses and the mind.” (www.artexpertswebsite.com 19th Mar 12 8.17am). He says that as he painted he heard tones of colour, and chords of music. I feel that the landscape, exterior and interior, are the music of my eyes. Music has an influence on my photography in memory.  There is a timeless movement in life that I perceive when I am engrossed in my work.  In my images, shot in black and white, there is a sense of history captured in the film noir style. In black and white imagery there is a haunting quality that helps me depict the spirit of loved ones I sense in the light.

 “We are never real historians, but always near poets, and our emotion is perhaps nothing but an expression of a poetry that was lost”

“The Poetics of Space” (1958) Gaston Bachelard (1884 – 1962)

 www.goodreads.com 11thFeb12 at 16.02

 There are metaphors in abundance in my work. I recognise in the images that only when we have experienced the dark, can we experience the light. The darkness is my prison, the light is my freedom. The darkness is a barrier, an obstacle to be overcome. Feeling the light is a sense of being set free. The light makes its presence known to me. When I walk into a room I am struck by its power. I relate these words to the light…delicate, elegant, passionate, energetic, verve and punchiness.

 My belief that the loved ones once lost to me in death have now appeared to me in the light and I have found them again. I am no longer afraid of death and when there is no fear, there is a freedom to live.

“Such a caring for death, an awakening that keeps vigil over death, a conscience that looks death in the face, is another name for freedom” Jaques Derrida “The Gift of Death”

If I consider now the structuralist principles, even though I see my work as a theatrical drama to be shared by the viewer, the viewer will not understand completely what I have captured or identified in the images. I can explain what I feel is there, but the viewer’s perception will always differ from my own. Also the viewer’s views and beliefs will not necessarily be the same as my own. It is also true that I do not fully understand what I have captured in my photographs until I see them in print. It may be blindingly obvious but the understanding takes time to unfold.

“The phrase blindingly obvious implies when something is sufficiently evident it reaches a point at which we are blinded to its presence, rather than reminded of its presence” D Miller (2000) pg 51

Nationalmediamuseum.org 19thMar12 7.49am

“it frequently happens, moreover, and this is one of the charms of photography that the operator himself discovers on examination, perhaps long afterwards, that he has depicted many things he had no notion of at the time”

William Henry Fox Talbot Latticed Window (1839)

(Howarth. Sophie 2005: 21)

It is at home that all my possessions remind me of loved ones no longer with me. It is at home that I feel their presence. It is a presence that I wanted to capture. I am holding on to something that I fear is in danger of being lost. The “Duet” is the memory of shared moments, shared happiness and shared activity of playing duets with my mother. The photograph is a symbol of her leaving, the door half open is a metaphor that one day I will follow her, to play a duet with her once again.

 “the shadow of the object fell upon the ego”

“When we lose a beloved person or object, we begin a process that, if successful, ends in our finding them again, within us. It is how we grow and develop as people.”

Turkle (2007:9/10)

Asking myself what is memory the answer that came to me was that memory is to be immersed in a sense of time or place, when an event became an emotional response and the emotional response embedded itself in my being. The memory is cast in the structure of my DNA, it is remembered through an emotion. The emotion becomes a photograph imprinted on my heart.

“try to imagine what everyday life would be like in a society in which no one knew any history. Imagination boggles, because it is only through knowledge of its history that a society can have knowledge of itself. As a man without memory and self-knowledge is a man adrift, so a society without memory (or more correctly, without recollection) and self-knowledge would be a society adrift” Arthur Marwick Sim.S (1999:3)

The memories I have inform my present. When I was working on my last project linking the past to the present, I researched my own past, the members of my family I never knew, my family and friends who are no longer here with me, and the objects that have remained important to me. It is all of these aspects of my life that now inform my creative practice. The deeper I delve into the past and my memories, the more intense my images become. I understand more of what I am and what I see. Without my memories, without the objects, my personal history would be lost. This is another aspect of my imagery that speaks to me. There is a sense of the lost and the found, and there is a discomfort and a fear, that what I have found will again be lost.