The Ethics of Form in the Photographic Essay

An impressive essay on the 'photographic essay', opening with a
discussion of the 'photography and language' theories of Burgin
(""Seeing Sense''), and Barthes (""The Photographic Message'').
The photographic essays examined are: Jacob Riis' ""How the
Other Half Lives'' (1890), James Agee's and Walker Evans' ""Let
Us Now Praise Famous Men'' (1939), Caldwell and Bourke's ""You
have seen their Faces'', Robert Frank's ""The Americans''
(1958), Roland Barthes' ""Camera Lucida'' (1981), Malek Alloula
""The Colonial Harem'' (1981/86), Edward Said and Jean Mohr's
""After the Last Sky'' (1986). The authors concluding remarks
gives an indication of this article's contents: ""Why attempt to
'classicize' by classifying and formalizing a medium that is so
young and unpredictable? The photographic essay occupies a
strange conceptual space in our understanding of representation.
On the one hand, it seems to participate in ...the tendency of
'modernist painting' to 'break down the concept of genre
altogether'.(...) This is the tendency I have associated with
the mutual 'resistance' of photography and writing, the
insistence on the distinctive character of each medium, the
search for 'purity' of approach that is both aesthetic and
ethical. On the other hand, the roots of the photo essay in
documentary journalism, newspapers, magazines, and the whole
ensemble of visual-verbal interactions in mass media connect it
to popular forms of communication that seem quite antithetical
to modernism in their freedom of exchange between image and
text. Perhaps this is just a way of placing the photographic
essay at the crossroads between modernism and postmodernism,
understanding it as a form in which the resistance to image-text
exchange is (in contrast to painting) most crucial precisely
because it has the most to overcome..''.
Univ. of Chicago,


Citaten:
Barthes, R.: Camera Lucida (1981)
Berger, J.: Another Way of Telling (1982)
Barthes, R.: The Photographic Message (tr. 1977)
Burgin, V.: Seeing Sense

Agee, J. / Evans, W.: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1939)
Moran, T.: The Photo Essay (1974)
Frank, R.: The Americans (1959)
Schloss, C.: In Visible Light (1987)
Morris, W.: The Home Place (1948)
Strand, P. / Newhall, N.: Time in New England
Baetens, J.: The Intermediate Domain.. (Crit.Inq. 15,i2,1989)
Stott, W.: Documentary Expression (1973)
Kozal, W.: Madonnas of the Fields (Genders nr2,Summer1988)
Bourke-White, M. / Caldwell, E.: You Have Seen Their Faces (1937)
Hunter, J.: Image and Word (1987)
Mitchell, W.J.T.: Blake's Composite Art (1977)
Alloula, M.: The Colonial Harem (1981)
Said, E. / Mohr, J.: After the Last Sky (1986)
Berger, J. / Mohr, J.: The Seventh Man (1975/1982)
Bhabha, H.: Signs Taken for Wonders (Crit.Inq. 12,nr1,Aut1985)
Cavell, S.: The World Viewed (1971)
Mitchell, W.J.T.: Ut Pictura Theoria (Crit.Inq. 15,nr2,Win1989)