The main focus of this section of Fried's
Why Photoraphy Matters As Art As Never Before focuses mainly on some of Jeff Wall's photographs, what Jeff Wall has to say about these photographs, and how these "everyday" images mirror the concepts of Wittgenstein's thought experiment and that of the absorptivity.
Wall, Fried feels, has moved from what he would call "obviously staged images" into images that Wall refers to as "neo-realist" or "near documentary" (he describes near documentary as scenes that once existed but were not photographed at the time, so he recreates them as they seemed to be and shoots them as if they were happening in real time.) Though he does shoot some actual documentary images, Wall is sure to label them as such and keep them separate from his other forms of photography. The neo-realist title that Wall gives his photographs comes from the lack of their obvious stagedness that his previous photos, like
Dead Troops Talk (Photo 1)
and
Picture For Women (Photo 2)
, readily show to the viewer. (Though he does say that art should show somewhat how it came to be, which for him, would be to let in on some of the stagedness in his photographs.) However, if one was not told that Wall's neo-realist images were not straight photography, the photographs might be mistaken for his actual documentary photographs. The reason for this, and the way Wall creates this sense of realism, is by using everyday scenes/actions/ideas and weaving through, almost seamlessly, the concept of absorptivity.
The absorptive, as Fried talked about in chapter one in some detail, relates to the theatrical/anti-theatrical aspects of the actions within the image. Does the subject know we're viewing him/her? If they are aware of our viewing presence, are they pretending to ignore that we even exist in this viewing, or are they acting in the absorptive for our entertainment, purely as an act? All of these questions were brought up in Fried's third beginning toward the end of his chapter 1, but are still valid questions when dealing with the absorptive in imagery (and Wittgenstein brings up a thought activity relating to the extraordinary experience of viewing the absorptive activity of another, which I will talk about further ahead.) As for Wall, he decides that these activities will be absorptive activities, but that the viewer will play a role in the images as well (in other words, the subject/s are basically aware that they are being viewed, but act as if they are not seen.) In doing so, Wall is able to create these images, over the course of 2 weeks per image, that appear to be almost candid shots of somebody who (to the audience's point of view) may not be fully aware that they are being photographed and seem to be fully absorbed in their everyday activity (photo 3
Morning Cleaner, photo 4
Housekeeping, photo 5
Woman with a Covered Tray).
The "everyday" that Wall portrays in his images is not without reasons that relate directly back to the miracle of art and how it can be viewed and looked upon in different ways by different viewers. Wittgenstein here says that it is remarkable to look upon something and see it as art versus looking upon the same thing without thinking of art at all. In the former, one may see that the "everyday" actions are a miracle to look upon when seen with artist's eyes, but in the latter, the appearance of the image or object becomes just that: an object. It is not meaningful, it is not mind opening, it is not a miracle, it is simply
an object. Because Wall's images are meant to be viewed as art, he is then giving the viewer a phenomenal gift: seeing an everyday action that appears to not yet be contaminated by the presence of an immediate viewer. This brings me to Wittgenstein's "thought activity" (see above diagram). Ludwig Wittgenstein, an Austrian philosopher in the first half of the 20th century, created a thought activity that goes like this: imagine you are in a theatre and on stage there is a man pacing back and forth, lighting a cigarette, sitting down, completely unaware of an audience at all. This man is doing the things that he does when nobody is around to see them done. In this activity, there is a barrier between the audience and the pacing man, where the man is actually in his flat, performing his everyday tasks to himself, and the audience is able to view this as if it were being presented on a stage in front of them. It is something we cannot ever view, this purely individual action, because although we've happened upon people acting in the everyday by themselves, the moment where they do not realize we are there lasts only briefly, and we are not able to view it in the same perspective (with the same admiration for its beauty and pureness) as we would looking upon this man with the lit cigarette. The ideas in this thought activity are directly mimicked in Wall's photographs of the everyday (whether he knew about Wittgenstein's ideas or not), and these photographs can therefore be viewed in the same manner: with wonder and a realization of its untouched beauty.
Jeff Wall creates these images of the everyday, of people being absorbed in these everyday scenes, of the beauty (when viewed as art and from with an artist's mind) of these previously unobserved, pure moments. Fried quoted Heidegger earlier in the chapter as saying that our absorption in the everyday is essentially our "falling" into the world and as Pippin points out, our self-conscious realization of how we go about in that world and how/where we choose so situate ourselves into said world. We become so absorbed in the world, we tend to miss its phenomenal aspects. Wall seems to fills these moments that we miss with his images, almost as if to show us that it's not too late to still marvel at these moments of intrinsic beauty.
*As a side note, some of Wall's earlier works remind me a lot of Gregory Crewdson's photographs, what with the elaborate set ups, the amount of work needing to be done, etc:
Dead Troops Talk is one of these, and
The Flooded Grave is another, seen here.
The cinematic effect is prominent more so in Crewdson's work, as he strives to make his images very dramatic and set up, but I found that Wall, especially in
Dead Troops Talk, does a bit of the same in the stagedness.
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