Inscriptions

Walter Benjamin had me mesmerized until he said about August Sander’s photographs of types, “Work like Sander’s could overnight assume unlooked-for topicality. Sudden shifts of power such as are now overdue in our society can make the ability to read facial types a matter of vital importance. Whether one is of the left or right, one will have to get used to being looked at in terms of one’s provenance. And one will have to look at others the same way. Sander’s work is more than a picture book. It is a training manual.” The passage sounded disturbingly close to what one living in fear of terrorism might say after 9-11. His statement, which seemed like a very dangerous one, led me to look more closely at who he was. It turns out that he revoked his theory of aura because he saw it as being too closely related to fascism. And re-reading the statement, with the knowledge that he was Jewish, I thought he may have been saying that it was important at this time to be aware that you might be looked at and judged due to your particular outward appearance or perhaps he saw certain advantages in the act of physiognomy. Either way, the statement related to what Sekula described regarding Eliza Farnham and Mathew Brady’s “Rationale of Crime.” The most interesting idea about the acts of physiognomy and the photographs that we have as documentation of the acts is how the traces or archives are viewed now. How far have we come from seeing people as “types” and how have our perceptions of type changed? More than likely most people make subjective assumptions about the “type” of person that they are viewing in a photograph. Thus, in this case the archive is always subjective and can never be fully trusted.

Ricoeur says, “The most valuable traces are the ones that were not intended for our information.” This brought me back again to Benjamin, but this time in his discussion of Atget. Atget may or may not have intended his works to be used as “information.” But, they did remain somewhat buried for a time according to Benjamin. What I find interesting here is that there is a sort of double burial of Atget’s photos as an archive going on here leading to an increase in their value to us. As Benjamin says, “He [Atget] looked for what was unremarked, forgotten, cast adrift.” Atget documented something forgotten – or not intended for our information – and then his photographs were also buried or removed from our informational pool. In this way, Atget’s photographs become twice as valuable. There is a mystery in them due to the lack of information or aura. Yet, they do archive something of importance – something almost impossible to imagine – a lack of humanity. Yet, that documentation initially lurked in the shadows, thus the doubled burial.

I am looking forward to talking about Derrida as well. As I understand it he seems to be saying that the archive works against its self by making us forget. (?)