With the end of the story, the reader makes a decision [...], chooses one solution or another, as a result of which he gets out of fantasy. If he decides that the laws of reality remain untouched and allows the explanation of the described phenomena, we say that the work belongs to another genre: the uncanny. If, on the contrary, he decides that, given the phenomenon, a new law of nature must be considered - we enter the genre of the marvelous.
Tzvetan Todorov
Under a sky covered with heavy clouds, a field landscape stretches. The grasses yield to the pressure of the wind. A path leads through the meadows. On the surface we are looking at an ordinary landscape, but something is wrong with it. Why are the leaves blue? Far As an Eye Can See (As Far As an Eye Can See, 2002) is seductive in mood and disturbing at the same time.
In one of the most famous analyses of surrealist photography, Rosalind Krauss wrote: "Surreality is, one might say, nature transformed into a kind of writing. The special access that photography has to such experience makes possible its privileged relationship to reality." This relationship is rooted in the subject. The association with surrealism that comes to mind when one first views Sandy Skoglund's photographs can lead one astray. Skoglund, whose beginnings of artistic activity overlap with the moment of exhaustion of the avant-garde and modernist traditions, does not so much negate the avant-garde, but - tired of its excess in the 1970s - seeks a way to redefine it (in a similar way as Krauss or Hal Foster dealt with modernist myths in the theoretical field, and Sherrie Levine, Richard Prince or Cindy Sherman in art). The point of her photographs is not to evoke Surrealism as an artistic direction defined by a double field - automatism and daydreams - but to refer to an ingrained property in photography that was recognized long before André Breton (this was done not only by photographers, but also by writers Gustave Flaubert or Edgar Allan Poe) - the ability to wander between reality and embodied imagination. Although photography is an image, it can make objects appear real (as Hal Foster claimed) in our experience.
It is therefore about a deep understanding of the relationship between the image and reality, and this, in order to reveal itself, must be both evoked and transformed. This is why pop art and "appropriation art" (appropriation art), which are particularly fond of figurativeness and illusionism, have taken a liking to photography and the object. Because reality is revealed through objects. Recalling Foster's words, it can be said that "illusionism is used not to hide reality under the surfaces of simulation, but to reveal it in uncanny things." The careful arrangement of what I will call here "the effect of the uncanny" is a hallmark of Skoglund's work. It consists of reality, optical illusion and staging. Let's take a closer look at them.
"My paintings seem like dreams to others, not to me," - Skoglund says. And when one looks at her photographs, the above statement sounds at first implausible. What else would these photographs, so convincingly real, be? And yet, in my opinion, their juxtaposition with a dream is too simple. In reflection on photography at least since the time of André Bazin, the term "real hallucination" has been around. With it, the French scholar describes photography's ability, exploited by the Surrealists, to blur the distinction between fiction and reality. "Every image," reads the Ontology of the Photographic Image, "should be felt as an object and every object as an image. Hence, notes Bazin, there was a penchant in Surrealism for the use of optical illusions and meticulous representation of detail. However, the "real hallucination" of photography or film does not actually concern the non-image world. When we succumb to it, for example, in the cinema or when looking at a photograph, we do not transfer it to the world of conscious experience. We experience a real hallucination only in the face of an image, and only in its realm do we recognize the object as real. Imagining objects requires not only that we succumb to the illusion, but also that we recognize them as real in some way.
This aspect of "real hallucination" is mentioned in Images of Photography by Berndt Stiegler. The author refers to Hyppolyte Taine's correspondence with Gustave Flaubert. Intrigued by the "exuberant sensuality" of the writer's imagination, the art historian asks him the question, "If you have imagined a landscape, a figure or Emma's face, are there times when you mistake this intense imagination for real objects?" Flaubert replies: "Yes, always. The inner image is as real to me as the objective reality of things." And he compares it to a photograph, which "is never what one has seen." Would we agree with the author of "Madame Bovary"? After all, although an internal image can be considered real, the writer cannot assume that Emma will one day enter his office. It's different in photography; here we subconsciously assume that the object existed. The key to a real hallucination is the belief in the object.
This is well known to Sandy Skoglund, who, when asked why she does not generate images digitally, states: "To know that what we are looking at really existed changes our perception of the image." If a photograph can give the impression of reality, it is because we believe in the object in the picture. On this belief in the object was founded the model of documentary photography, which the author gradually undermined in her artistic practice.
Skoglund's early works in the series American Vacation Motel Cabins (1974) or Reflections in a mobile home (1977) seem like pure recordings of what is. Juxtaposed side by side, the identical motel cabins resemble a game of "find the five details that differentiate two pictures." How do they differ? Sometimes a different tree in the background or a different number of chairs in front of the entrance. In the second series, the photographer focuses on objects, but already here her propensity for narrative is revealed. In the metallic coatings of kitchen appliances, the figure of the doll and the author herself are alternately reflected in the mirrors. The documentary record of the interior of the house turns into a story about the strangeness of the ordinary world. The "effect of the uncanny" is revealed here for the first time, evoked by the twin images of the houses, the juxtaposition of the human figure and the mannequin (it was E.T.A. Hoffman in the form of Olympia who described the strangeness of dolls).
Tautologically subversive "still lifes" like Luncheon meat on a counter (1978) or Nine slices of marble cakes (1978) indicate an increasingly pronounced inclination toward staging. In them, the author juxtaposes pieces of food and objects: cake, fruit, boxes, with surroundings that harmonize with them in color or form. The dots on the plate merge with the dots of the tablecloth and peas, the pattern of the sausage harmonizes with the pattern of the marble countertop, the box wrapped in patterned paper, like a chameleon, disappears against the identical pattern of the ground. Skoglund has made excellent use of the photographic ability to create optical illusions here. As a result of translating three-dimensional space into two image dimensions, we lose the ability to recognize distances and directions. Objects turn into a flat, colorful jigsaw puzzle, at the same time we have an awareness of three-dimensionality, although we do not see it. Optical illusion affects our perception of reality. However, the perversity of optical illusion is that it is not permanent, our mind seeks to recognize the inconsistency of the image with our knowledge. Maurice Marleau-Ponty noted that we don't need to see all the faces of a hexagon to know what it looks like. Hence, the optical illusion is ambiguous - it leads to an image that is not only unambiguous, but in a sense inconclusive - in Derridean terms: it can be i-this-and-that.
However, photography's ability to create extremely realistic images of the seemingly impossible is put to full use in the most famous works of the 1980s and 1990s. These photographs of interiors can be seen as an example of subversive design in a perverse way. However, their "everydayness" is bracketed: the interiors are monochromatic, filled with objects that differ only in texture. The carpet here becomes eggshells, instead of wallpaper the walls are covered with popcorn. But in fact, each of these obsessively recurring motifs begins to take over the space and it is suddenly overrun by blue and green dogs (Green House, 1990) or purple squirrels (Gathering Paradise, 1991), engulfing the human figures. In an interview with Demetrio Paparoni, the author said: "I think of my work as shooting a film in a familiar environment, where the viewer feels comfortable. And suddenly, in this space, limited by the frame, there is always something clearly wrong." In Skoglund's photographs, the world eludes human authority (as in Cocktail party, 1992, where crisps seem to overgrow not only the party attendees' outfits, but also their faces).
In the opening passage of this text, I cited Tzvetan Todorov's text on "the fantastic." There the author distinguished two categories: he contrasted "uncanny" with "miraculous." The first term expressed acquiescence to explanation, the second - agreement to consider something as an unexplainable phenomenon. Todorov took the category of the uncanny (expressed in German "unheimlichkeit" and English "uncanny") from Freud, where it referred to a special mental state, felt as a result of contact not with strangeness coming from outside, but on the contrary - emerging from what is seemingly tame and familiar (the German term having in its root "heimlich" (unseen) expresses it perfectly). The uncanny, then, is something that emerges from the familiar, and perhaps by that very fact the most frightening. The authors of both gothic novels (analyzed by Freud) and modern thrillers have made excellent use of this phenomenon.
The uncanny in Skoglund's photographs is expressed by extracting their strangeness from everyday objects. The images show nothing "out of this world"; seemingly everything can be explained, which is why it is so disturbing. It's like in Hitchcock's The Birds. The revenge of the birds was provoked by human action and therefore seems inevitable. Radioactive Cats (1980) is explainable - as a result of nuclear annihilation; also the unexpected attack of glass dragonflies (in Breathing Glass, 2000) or our absorption by munchies could be read as a kind of revenge of the world on man falling into addiction to popcorn, chips, everyday objects. Skoglund's take on the problems and anxieties of modern times is bracketed by irony. Shimmering madness (Shimmering madness, 1998) or Germs are everywhere (Germs are everywhere, 1984) can be taken as a literal illustration of slogans repeated in the media.
Significant in this context seems to be the series of collages True fictions (True fiction), re-photographed in 1986, but developed again in 2004. In the foreground we see the faces of the models, in the background the everyday environment: apartments, streets or garages. The eloquent gestures and gazes indicate that there is a relationship between the figures and objects, which turns these photographs into micro-stories in the manner of literary fictions. The true fictions recall Richard Hamilton's perversely pop-art work What Actually Makes Today's Dwellings So Different, So Compelling? (Just What Is It That Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing, 1956). The objects depicted therein are as affecting as objects from a pop-artist's collage, while the titles are just as ironic and critical of contemporary culture and its subject fetishism. Errors of the Efficient Mind shows a scene in an office: a woman with a telephone receiver in her hand, another woman similar to the first in the background and a man in overalls and a cap. The office is unnaturally purple. Is the "failure of the efficient mind" of the title an equipment malfunction or a disturbance in our perception of natural colors? In Invention of the wheel we see two men against the backdrop of a dilapidated car. One of them holds an oval-shaped chip in his hand. The author juxtaposes everyday life and the intrusion of small, playful associations. It's moments like these, when suddenly it seems that something doesn't add up, as with déjà vu.
pretend also in a more serious way. For the aforementioned Hal Foster, the condition for encountering reality was repetition evoking a repressed traumatic experience from the past. Nothing can participate in this encounter that did not already exist; now - through evocation - it becomes real. Therefore, in his photographs Skoglund uses motifs that are, on the one hand, perfectly familiar and, on the other hand, fearful. Since, she says, these are not her dreams, perhaps they are the nightmares of others. It could be the figure of the terrifying nurse in a smock (in Patients and Nurses, 1982) or the image of multiplied animals. This obtrusiveness of subject subordination may suggest a kind of neurosis. The aforementioned Germs Are Everywhere can thus be read as a state of morbid fear of pollution. Foster notes that the encounter with reality is different for each viewer. Skoglund, too, while proposing a way of reading the photographs as text and noting that they can be different narratives, does not prejudge his ultimate interpretation. "I am happier," he says, "if the image expresses different meanings, even contradictory ones. The image triggers our fears, our memories. It embodies questions we don't want to answer: what is madness to us, why are we bothered by cobras in the bathroom or goldfish swimming through space?
is already mentioned that the "effect of the uncanny" is built through the impression of the reality of the represented world. This is why Foster invoked trompel'oleil (optical illusion) painting in the context of realism. The illusionism of pictorial representation, in his interpretation, is ambiguous because, looking at images of objects, we desire the objects themselves, which remain inaccessible. "Therefore," writes the critic, "perfect illusion is impossible, and even if it were possible, it could not answer the question of reality, which always remains behind (behind) and beyond (beyond) to entice us. Skoglund, too, chooses illusionism in order to lure us into the image and leave us with the uncertainty that the world we enter is not quite what we think it is.
Michael Fried in his book Why photography matters as art as never before? looks at the work of contemporary artists such as Jeff Wall, Andreas Gursky, Rineke Dijkstra and Luc Delahaye. Despite significant differences (in imaging, use of technique, subject matter), their work shares a common source - documentary photography - and moves in one direction - toward staging. Fried uses the expression "near documentary" (near documentary) after Walla. About Jeff Wall's work he writes: "His works are all described as both 'documentary' and
and "cinematic" (cinematographic) photographs, the later term implies a certain amount of preparation of the motif - a certain amount of "staging" (staging), in other words." This close-to-documentary imaging is carefully staged - from the level of the constructed set to the subsequent "doubles" with actors, but as a result, the scenes created retain all the markers of realistic photography: people walk, talk, perform ordinary activities. Why then, one might ask, all this staging? Necessary to understand this problem is another category - "theatricality" (theatricality). The scenes engage the viewer, who, thanks to illusiveness of a trompe l'oleil kind, becomes absorbed (absorption) by the image. Thus, it is a kind of sensation that is shared by the viewer in the theater of the spectator who can not so much project himself onto the characters as observe their behavior. The people in the pictures seem absolutely unaware that they are being observed, living in a self-contained world. In the same sense, Skoglund's worlds are "complete," "finished." As a result, her photographs can make us feel absorbed by the image. However, I would call her photographs not so much "almost documentary" as "almost fantastic." And this is because the visual illusion is used by her for a different purpose than in the works of Walla or Gursky. The photographer builds a convincing impression of unreality, relying on completely realistic material. "Conceptually active puzzles" by Skoglund, are built to make the viewer wonder what is real here.
cates at the end of the narrative about its fantasticality. He compares it with his own experience and determines its status. In the work Fresh hybrid (2008), we see human figures mingled with mannequins, anthropomorphic trees with bark made of soft velour, against a yarn sky. The world has transformed into a hybrid, mutated. This landscape is no longer confused with "natural," as we might still do with the view with which I began this text. But what would naturalness be? Nature has been transformed, we have considered organic what we ourselves have produced. Why would glass dragonflies, velvet trees be more artificial than genetically processed plant species? The decoration is ostentatiously artificial, the objects merely resemble real trees or the earth, like toys that we pattern on a model of reality. So why do we look at them as if they were real? We find ourselves in a theater and experience the play being played out as real. Where does our sight reach? As far as the eye can see means that our gaze has crossed the boundary of sensory visibility and reached the realm of imagination. There we create our own reality.
Photos courtesy of the author.
The article appeared in issue 31 of "Fotografia Quarterly" in 2009