The photographic image is not something invented, but something found
- H. Belting
Images of Metaphors II - already this perversely, yet ex definitione constructed verbal marriage, serving as the title of the series, referring directly to the main source of inspiration of the Authors of the exhibition - namely to the book by Bernd Stiegler Images of Photography. An album of photographic metaphors, requires a moment's reflection. For at the very beginning we have this metaphorical epithet to consider. What does this consciously applied rhetorical figure in the exhibition title mean here, where will it lead us?
Krzysztof Szlapa and Kamil Myszkowski, the initiators of this theatrum of performances-metaphors of photographic artifacts-are an exceptionally creative pair of visual artists, friends, mutually supporting each other and to some extent creatively complementing each other. More than once their artistic concepts were born, so one can certainly think, from mutual inspiration. The resultant of this mutual relationship are well thought-out and refined projects. Exhibition Images of Metaphors II presented at ZPAF Gallery Katowice, is the aftermath of one such long-term artistic endeavor, in which the Authors speak with a "common voice." This is the second installment of works by the Myszkowski/Szlapa duo, touching on the issue of metaphor in photography. The creators of the exhibition decided to show us what they love, what is very close to them, what they identify with. This time, however, they went a step further, going beyond the book suggestions offered by B. Stiegler, expanding and at the same time enriching the subject matter of the exhibition with their own thoughts.
Basically, the message seems simple - the entire exhibition is devoted to self-transformation touching "the inner world of photography," was said in the opening word of this show. Exactly - an intermedia show, because the creators in the current installment of the exhibition, going beyond the image itself, beyond "pure" photography, also prepared a number of additional surprises for viewers in the form of spatial objects and an arranged, separate space-installation. The whole picture was complemented by a soundtrack specially edited for this exhibition, accompanying the iconic contemplation of the image - called "Symphony" or "Music of Photography." However, uncomplicated as it might seem at first viewing, this message is not. The optics of the author's gaze, raising the issue of the exhibition, hooks equally on both the metaphor of the image and the anthropology of the object. For the exhibits on display take on a meaningful symbolic and even magical significance. They become almost fetishes. All the objects shown were once touched or created by a human hand. Now they are metaphors of their previous incarnation, a kind of reincarnation during life. Their meanings have intensified, they have clustered. They function as carriers of emotions, transfers of memories.
***
Meanders and multiplicity of paths. The understatements. Mystery. Inspiration. It is a precipitous, complicated maze of media-mental references. For it exists on at least several levels. The first, basic level of this labyrinth is the level of the "raw" medium - photographic recording, reproduction. The next level is the level of the artifact thanks to the medium, either for it or created by it. Finally, on the ladder of entities we reach the highest, abstract level, the level of the image-altar. Here we mean the image in the sense of a mental image, directly coupled to a feeling, an experience, with all its possible modalities, interpretations, complexities, allusions. We will not consider here whether to make a strict, direct attempt to assign ad hoc meanings to, let's call it, a "catalog of references", because the number of possible permutations would easily exceed the volume of a short text.
The images on display themselves wish to tell us their stories. Stories that are consciously deceptive, repeatedly looped, like the infinite surface of a Möbius ribbon, as in Maurits Escher's prints, because they treat in a strict sense the very core, the meat of the photographic imaginarium. Ultimately, therefore, the viewer is forced to face individually the problem of emanating metaphorical imagery, directly leaking at him from the walls of the Gallery; to locate it in his own psyche, initiating for this purpose individual interpretative competence. Probably a different sequence of associations the presented works will evoke in the mind of a person who is "on the way" with photography and a completely different one, who does not have such experience. As a matter of principle, it is worth adding that in the arsenal of the presented works there are compositions very diverse in content, both with humorous overtones (Penetration apparatus), as well as, at the opposite pole, nostalgic-serious (The trap of looking).
1.
So let's take a walk through the cosmos of photographic (un)obviousness of Krzysztof Szlapa and Kamil Myszkowski. After this unheard of, amazing laboratory of photographic found things. It will be necessary, for the sake of certainty and greater animation while wandering through the abysmal labyrinth of metaphors and references, to unroll a sizable ball of Ariadne's thread, so as not to get lost in its depths, to find our own way. So, let's let our imagination run wild, let's finally embark on a journey....
In the first room of the Gallery, the eye is immediately drawn to a photograph called A love game. It reveals a beautiful, centuries-old, probably still 19th century, photographic album, and therefore from a time we cannot remember. This is one of the reveals-metaphors "added", as it were, by the exhibition's Directors to their own repertoire of artifacts, with no counterpart in Stiegler's book.
Whose hands once touched the edge of the massive pages of this noble volume? Whose likenesses, taken down in the atelier and set into its interior, can we admire? Why juxtaposed in this way and not another? It certainly mattered! In any case, the closeness of hands and the brilliance of gazes (but whose?) are indeed fixed in this book. They form an authentic yet intangible, non-verbal bond with those viewing it today. In the area of culture known as the "anthropology of things," it has not been known for a long time that objects can define a person's identity. They can also be carriers of emotion and memory (here I am reminded of Prażmowski's "struggle" with time, matter, non-being, with references to the anatomy of passing).
"Corporeal memory" of an object can sometimes give us an answer touching its duration, because objects can also "respond", thus building a kind of "relationship" with people. Objects also act as props to complete stories and, finally, as metaphors for hidden meanings.
The creation of objects is inevitably connected with time. In other words, they are "rooted in time" - so, as it were, they obligatorily have the status of "temporality." The life time of objects is coupled with the life of humans, but ultimately these are not permanent or identical relationships. Strict comparison of the ontological statutes of these two worlds is impossible, because it is immeasurable. All of the above-mentioned attributes were meticulously used by the authors to create a discrete narrative of the show. Thus, returning to Love game, this seemingly classic portrait of an artifact of ancient photographic art can be treated as an opening image. For it refers to the motif of the book - which is, nomen omen, the overriding instance of the author's inspiration. It is a direct reference and signpost to the album-metaphors, and thus is a sort of introduction and invitation-invitation to a mental journey, "leafing through the pages" and uncovering the secrets of the subsequent pages of the exhibition.
***
Without hesitating, we move deeper into the abyss of the labyrinth. Along the way, we come across an inspiring photograph titled. Phantom. This is an interesting picture in many ways. Let us pause here for a moment. What is it, how to understand the essentially rudimentary phenomenon, which we could call by the general name of the image metaphor? A prerequisite for answering such a question is to at least try to understand the fundamental relations pertaining to the system: reality-image-imagination.
In the classical view, the role of the image was to be reduced to serving as a faithful reproduction of the external world. It was to become, no more and no less, a mere veristic representation of an external reference. However, due to this basic and inalienable attribute of imaging - reflection - this was not the case. The seductive power of reflection is an abyssal cosmos of interpretive possibilities. Already Plato reported that "the image is the existence of what is not there." - and so an image in his understanding is only a delusion, something inferior, with the status of a secondary being. Thus, in essence, the so-called found reality, an external reference ("living medium") to which one could refer explicitely, without mediation, was considered objective. Such argumentation, however, proved illusory. After all, with the simplest, elementary observation, it can be proven that there is no such object, object, phenomenon, etc., in so-called reality that has clearly defined rules for how it is to be represented. This is where photography enters the battlefield. Because of its "mechanical" pedigree, it was intended to serve as evidence of an objective and unambiguous representation of the world. At the same time, a strenuous attempt was made to impose on it the dictates of an exclusively "soulless" capture of reality. Thus, the photographic image, having the arbitrarily established status of a poor image, could not receive the honor of ennoblement to the level of a work of art.
But the external reference in relation to the real world, however, is not, as it turned out, an objective strong point'em. On the contrary! It has infinite possibilities of relations (its various unveilings can be "registered" in countless ways). Thus, it stimulates significantly the possibilities of the image itself. The image, in this sense, is a completely autonomous entity, an artifact beaming with its own brilliance, a separate world, no less significant than a number of analogous iterations of available references. This is a vitally important conundrum for the contemporary meaning of the image. Although here its status is again put to the severe test of the "crisis of representation." Jean Baudrillard even referred to images as "murderers of the real." Nevertheless, on this kind of modality, an extraordinary "pictorial legitimacy," the meaning and absolute autonomy of the Phantom, showing the creative possibilities of (photographic) imagery. It is obvious that all the images brought to life in the exhibition are based on creation, understatement, metaphor. However, Phantom appears to be a special case here.
***
Unraveling more and more boldly the orb of the mythical thread-route, a little farther, going into the depths of the depths of the world of photography we are stopped by another image. A peculiar image appears before our eyes - it is a photograph of an old glass plate. A light-fixed negative. It is like an emblem, an anchor image, an anchor point. She is already by her very nature, to the highest degree, "photographic of photographic" of those recalled in the exhibition. For she is a direct witness to the "mechanical" nature of the medium. It is a specific artifact because it is at the same time an "image of an image." On the internal image-negative, under the epidermis directly accessible to the viewer, there are encapsulated photons of light that once fell on the noble structure of silver halides, fixing them in such and not other positions. The fingerprint of the photons trapped in the light-sensitive medium. Such "sudden" petrification of a face or object is fascinating in itself, even though we know the scientific or chemical basis of the process. The physically existing negative image, where light is the director in a dual sense, has lost nothing of its magic and has even gained in recent years.
The image of whose face - close and unknown at the same time - was registered by the black, distorting mirror of the film? The reflection of whose radiance forced the celestial lumen to forge a unique, one-of-a-kind "facsimile of reality" in a layer of silver? Why and when? This we will probably never be able to find out. It will forever remain a silent secret of this image - so be it, it's a very good thing! After all, photography is not only a metaphor for reality, but at least equally a mystery. By the force of inertia, the concept or idea of a mirror-memory is reflected in this old, damaged negative. It thus has the power to influence as a memory buffer. But again, recurring like a mantra is the question - whose memory? If there is no longer anyone for whom this photograph is an "extension of memories," it becomes worthless (in the documentary sense). But - by inverse proportionality - it grows in strength with great speed in the role of metaphorical implication. It thus becomes an image with a stronger and stronger mental provenance and a weaker and weaker real one. Jacques Lacan claimed that each of us in the first months of life is in the so-called "mirror phase." The material photographic negative maintains this status much longer, at least until its own destruction as a physical medium.
***
At the very bottom of the cave of shadows we encounter two very interesting images: Inferno and Depth. Not coincidentally, the authors juxtaposed two opposing elements side by side: fire (Inferno) and water (Depth). The visual hiatus of this diptych, however, is only apparent. On the contrary, the images are convergent; they do not so much cancel as complement each other. Using these photographs as an example, one can undoubtedly see - to introduce a pinch of a freer tone into our deliberations - what hardship the creators of the exhibition had to put themselves through, what agonies and torments they underwent. For they subjected the exhibits in question to harsh, ruthless trials of soaking, burning, trampling, mixing with mud, and even subjected to an attempt to grow roots (Life), as in the case of a certain iconic lens of Soviet production in its time ... But let's return to the Inferno. It's an allegory of a truly Dantean hell in a photographic display!
During the so-called Middle Ages, everything that was considered evil, unworthy, was ruined by fire. Diseases and unclean spirits, women considered witches and magical practices. And what is photography, the photographic image itself, if not a magical creation? It would not have survived in any case. Nor would the photographer have taken it lightly. After all, it is none other than a sorcerer in the flesh! Burning out the entrails as a purification from evil powers (all those mirror-memories, embalming time, etc.) seems inevitable. After this meaningful act of "transmutation", only what is pure, innocent, primordial is to be reborn. Fire as an act of self-purification, reset, starting all over again. Tabula rasa. The transformation of the old into the new. But what can we do after expelling the evil powers, the forces of Satan? Perform a ceremonial cleansing in aqua, of course! Such a ritual washing from the layers and imprints of time was inevitably subjected to the DRUH camera in the image titled "The new". Depth.
The element of water, moreover, has an ambivalent provenance. On the one hand, after all, it is a symbol of purification, transformation, vitality, the beginning of life, while on the other - of chaos and annihilation. It is also said to have the ability to carry information (here we would be in strong comity with photography), and even prophetic properties. The two basic elements, water and fire, are a complicated and therefore very extensive interpretive medium.
2.
A few words are also worth devoting to "Symphony." This is because music, stimulating the "extra-pictorial" strings of sensitivity, primarily the psyche, intensifies the reception of content. "Symphony of Photographs" - a specially prepared soundtrack for this purpose - has become a kind of binder, bonding and intensifying the entire viewing experience. It is a Symphony of sounds designed to orchestrate photographic instruments. First, our ear is tickled by a few tens of seconds prelude of springs - like an introduction to the center of the piece. Later on, the dynamic shade of the piece rapidly intensifies. The razor-sharp crackle of the shutters being released, the movement of the mirrors, the distinct rasp of the spring tension. Next, the somewhat more discreet sound of the "center" of the stage - the springs of self-timers, the forest of mechanisms, levers - striking, clanking, clattering, snapping, ringing. Finally, the whisper of the quietest registers - almost silent. For could the extremely subtle sound of the aperture leaves be heard, or is it just the listener's imagination playing tricks? Interestingly, it would seem at first that the random sounds of the mechanisms could give at most a more or less intense cacophony of sounds. And here's a surprise. In the track of the more than six-minute-long "Music of Photography" there is a distinct rhythmic feel! Of course, this is the result of editing, but very skillfully executed "Symphony" thus became a strong and important complement to the overall performance.
3.
At the end of our considerations, it is worth raising a more general theme. Well, there is still - implicitly stated - a certain general premise, pertaining to the whole viewing of the exhibition, introducing the discerning viewer to a certain ambivalent jitteriness, Namely, the presented works, or at least part of them, are interwoven with the inevitable, inexorable and progressive removal of traditional photography into the deep shadow of (contemporary) photographic activities. This symbolic, gradual retreat of the universe of so-called analog, silver photography to the edge of the horizon of the abyss of oblivion, revealed through some of the artifacts presented at the exhibition is inevitable. The entire photographic arsenal shown is, as it were, "programmed" to melt into nothingness, to return to the bosom of non-being. The "old" ends and the "new" is reborn on the ruins. Contexts, meanings, priorities change... This is, of course, no novelty, we are not discovering any virgin lands. After all, given the specificity and uniqueness of the medium of photographic imaging, bearing in mind its special relationship with time, a pinch of nostalgia inevitably seeps through from the guts of these works.
As a consolation, however - breaking the nostalgic streak - we had a chance to visit a specially prepared installation within the exhibition, a "cave of apparitions" called (Revelation). In this particular space of the "dark" or "red" room - as you prefer - we could get an awakening, a purification, sitting vis-a-vis the old photo camera. It is possible that the revelation in this unheard of "caverna magica"* will help us overcome the grief of loss, set our sights on new paths, open our eyes wider, point to other possibilities.
***
Exhibition Images of Metaphors II, or in fact the intermedia show that it was in fact, is a kind of portrait tribute to Photography in gratitude for the miracle of its existence. The authors, in a "direct" way, let the objects - all those erstwhile photographic tools - speak once again, perhaps for the last time. At the same time, it is a specific portrait. For it is close to - let's risk the term - mortal photography. Metaphor, or something given, to put it briefly, not directly, not for direct consumption, a certain set of signs translated indirectly through another, has been, is and will continue to be an inherent attribute of photographic art. Thanks to the specific procedures made by the authors on the matter of photographic artifacts, they have been - at least in part - liberated from the oppression of (original) meaning. In other words - they "found freedom", at the expense of progressive destruction, to the point of total annihilation and dispersion. The entire exhibition, by the way, can be treated globally as a kind of metaphor for the passage of time. In photography, after all, time is one of the canonical postulates, treated in a special way.
* Caverna magica (Italian) - literally: magic cave.
