Brief

Using the weareoca website you need to search ‘​ Beneath the Surface​’ to give you access to a blog about Jeff Wall’s (1994), ​Insomnia​, interpreted using some of the tools discussed above.

Read and reflect upon the chapter on Diane Arbus in S​ingular Images: Essays on Remarkable Photographs ​by Sophie Howarth (2005). This is out of print but you may be able to find it in your local university library: some of the chapters are available as pdfs online. You’ll find the Arbus chapter on the student website. If you haven’t yet read any of Judith Williamson’s (2014) ‘​ Advertising’​ articles (see Introduction to Context and Narrative), now would be a good time to do so.

Insomnia Jeff Wall (1994)

Using the weareoca website you need to search ‘​ Beneath the Surface​’ to give you access to a blog about Jeff Wall’s (1994), ​Insomnia​, interpreted using some of the tools discussed above.

I saw this image many years ago, and without doubt if it hadn’t had a title that is so explanatory, I would not have come to the conclusion that the image related to the condition insomnia. There is desperation, sadness and something very uncomfortable about the image that gives rise to a suggestion of a breakdown or some other manifestation of mental illness.

Beneath the Surface by Sharon Boothroyd starts by discussing the formal level of the image and what it donates. She describes a kitchen which is donated by the presence of a cooker, freezer, table and chairs but goes on to suggest that

“….what we miss in the denotation is the connotation of the type of kitchen that it is” (Boothroyd, 2012)

There are plenty of phrases and words that I am finding difficult to understand in relation to the tools used to deconstruct an image but the words denotation and connotation seem to be fairly straight forward. I see them in simple terms as being what something is and what something means. The kitchen has a cold feel to it, mainly brought about by the harsh lighting, stark colours and emptiness. Boothroyd writes

“The cold colours of the cupboards and the starkness of the scene, the harsh lighting and the hotspots, give a kind of eerie feel.  It connotes a place of discomfort; of coldness and unease which we can sense even though we cannot actually be in that kitchen.  This information has been delivered to us via a series of signs and signifiers carefully selected and utilised by the photographer: (Boothroyd, 2012)

I am unsure at this time exactly what is meant by signs and signifiers but they seem to be things that have been used to conjure up the connotations. Boothroyd talks about her own personal experience of insomnia whilst pregnant and the open cupboards alluding to a frenzied search for a snack that might help.

She moves on to discuss Walls writings and

“creating a dialogue between his work and other artists” (Boothroyd, 2012)

Wall’s “A sudden Gust of wind after Hokusai” is referenced as a work based on that of Hokusai’s woodcut ‘A Strong Gust of Wind at Ejiri’ from circa 1831 which leads Boothroyd to ask the question “So what does Insomnia refer to?” and its use in plays such as those by Macbeth to portray feelings of guilt or regret. Bringing it into a more modern time it is often a symptom of stress and anxiety. Boothroyd all alludes to the artist, insomnia and the creative process.

The size of the image is discussed (its big) suggesting that Wall wanted it to gab peoples attention and also commenting on Walls own words when he stated that the image was made in response to the words “When a prince doesn’t sleep well, a nation doesn’t either” and that

“this work was made as part of the desire to depict unimportant people in his images and in doing so he makes the narrative transcend culture, class and success.  He speaks to us all”

The last phrase “He speaks to us all” made me think of parts of the course where the question around self portraiture has asked about these images being just about self or to highlight issues affecting a wider audience. I had alluded to the fact that I had always thought of self portraiture big about self in previous posts and once again I am seeing that this is far from the truth.

Judith Williamson’s (2014) Advertising articles

Before looking at and reflection on the chapter in Singular images, I decided to have a look a the advertising articles by Judith Williamson, mentioned in the brief.

I found some of them really helpful in starting to understand some of the deconstruction tools mentioned in the course notes. One in particular was the Dove advert (Fig.2)

Its reference to items that code an image in a way to suggest something is really useful. The phrase

So what is it about the image that codes her as ‘real’?

alludes to several things in the image, but mainly to the process of non glamorisation, the opposite of what we might see in a typical beauty advert. Williamson points out some of these differences

…the woman is laughing and appears to be looking at something specific – her arm, which she is touching to feel the effect of the advertised product. Women in beauty ads often smile, usually in a seductive or mysterious way, but they don’t laugh. They never look at anything directly unless it is the viewer – or else they look vaguely into the middle distance…

…Her skin and limbs are not photographed in such a way as to sensualise them for the viewer – they are not in close-up, or angled so as to be presented as ‘available’, but instead her figure is seen straightforwardly at a short distance…

…The woman in the Dove ad appears to be feeling and responding to something independently of the viewer, which is highly antithetical to the general mode of glamour advertising…

(Source Photographic Review – Back Issue Archive – Issue 83 Summer 2015 – Column Page – Advertising Dove – Column by Judith Williamson., 2004)

Singular Images: Essays on Remarkable Photographs

Read and reflect upon the chapter on Diane Arbus in S​ingular Images: Essays on Remarkable Photographs ​by Sophie Howarth (2005). This is out of print but you may be able to find it in your local university library: some of the chapters are available as pdfs online. You’ll find the Arbus chapter on the student website.

Liz Jobey starts by describing the image using some thought provoking and powerful words. Pity, victims, benighted, watchful, nervous and protective being just a few. It is obvious by Joby’s description that this is not the “normal happy family snap” If you were only to read her description without viewing the image you would be able to get a very clear idea of the mood of the image.

“When you look at this young Brooklyn family about to set out on a Sunday outing, you can’t help wondering what will become of them”

This gives the essay a very clear basis on which she builds.

I tried to discover if Diane Arbus had directed them not to smile but was unable to verify this. Although Jobey writes

“…Forced to look straight ahead, forbidden to smile, the pose encourages separation rather than cohesion…”

She goes on to describe the people, which in essence backs up and gives credence to her earlier statements. Her description details their attire and the feelings that are being projected by the way they are being portrayed. She talks about the man and his “whole physical presence being tentative, a lightly poised figure in shades of grey” “watchful, nervous” In comparison her description of his wife uses words such as “voluptuous”, “armoury”, “self protection”, “defiant”. There is a difference in the way the experience is affecting this married couple.

Joby gives us some facts about the family which only serve to compound the idea that this image may indeed be showing us a reality that is so often hidden behind the smiles and poses we see in family photographs. We learn that they are a young couple by the name of Richard and Marylin Dauria. Richard an Italian immigrant working as a car mechanic, they have three children, one of whom is “mentally retarded” and were married when Marylin was sixteen. Marylin was twenty-three when the photograph was taken. We also learn later on that this was not the only encounter between Arbus and the family. Another image believed to have been taken on the same day shows them at home in their living room. It does make me wonder if there was more staging to this image than meets the eye and that albeit many of the things that  we and Joby are suggesting from the image may be true; could it also be true that Arbus made sure this came across by the way in which she staged and took the shot. We get some more information later in the essay relating to Arbus and her methods which add to this idea.

“We know from accounts given by her friends that Arbus was a very persuasive person, who spoke, as she wrote, quirkily and with great charm. She accused herself of being ‘kind of two-faced’, when photographing people. ‘I’m very ingratiating. It really kind of annoys me. I’m just a little too nice.’ So whatever misgivings they might have had, the two of them stood there, looking ahead with what they perhaps felt was as little expression as possible, except that their faces are so expressive, and each one· has a different reaction and a different emotion. For Arbus, a multiple portrait was rare, and in this case it was a rich reward. This was not only a picture about individuals and the gap between how they intended to look and how they looked, it was a picture about the family, about the distance between the ideal and the reality”

 

It’s hard to believe that anyone would want a photograph taken of themselves that illicit the kind of thoughts this one does. It is not know what Marylin and Richard thought of the photograph and wether they hated it, liked it or were indifferent or indeed if they have ever seen it! There is an uncomfortable feeling about the image, as if we are seeing something that is  being shown to the world that they did not agree to. Not the photograph but what the photograph is saying about them. This is the case regardless of wether what we think is true or not.

Arbus was known for making her photographs disturbing and uncomfortable, as Joby describes

“The photographs that first marked Arbus out for attention in the early 1960s were portraits of the people she referred to as ‘freaks’, men and women living on the margins of society because of their physical or mental or sexual difference. They included midgets and giants, circus performers and drag queens, faith healers and mystics, each of whom she sought out and persuaded to pose for a photograph. But although they were all in some sense extraordinary and ‘different’, it wasn’t this that made her photographs disturbing, it was the way she photographed them; it was the way they engaged”

The essay give enough information about the family, the photographer and the era in which it was taken for us to gain an insight into the image beyond just a brief glance, a feeling of sadness and despair then gone.

“It was an ordinary Sunday afternoon like any other. But her portrait tells otherwise; its power comes from the ordinariness they refute”

Bibliography

Boothroyd, S., 2012. Beneath the surface. [online] The Open College of the Arts.
Available at: <https://www.oca.ac.uk/weareoca/photography/beneath-the-surface/&gt;
[Accessed 15 March 2021].

Figure 1 Wall, J. Insomnia (1994)
At: https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/jeff-wall/jeff-wall-room-guide
[Accessed 15/03/2021]

Figure 2
Unilever, 2004. [image]
At <https://www.source.ie/archive/issue83/is83column_Judith_Williamson_11_58_13_03-08-18.php&gt;
[Accessed 17 March 2021].

Source.ie. 2004. Source Photographic Review – Back Issue Archive – Issue 83 Summer 2015 – Column Page – Advertising Dove – Column by Judith Williamson.. [online]
Available at: <https://www.source.ie/archive/issue83/is83column_Judith_Williamson_11_58_13_03-08-18.php&gt;
[Accessed 17 March 2021].

Figure 3 Arbus, D (1966)
At: https://www.moca.org/collection/work/a-young-brooklyn-family-going-for-a-sunday-outing-nyc
[Accessed 15/03/2021]

Alexander, Darsie M.Singular images: essays on remarkable photographs