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Considering Vietnam

Considering Vietnam

Imperial War Museum

17 February 2012 – 18 February 2012

The Vietnam War is evolving from contemporary memory into history. This two day conference, held at IWM London, explores how the media and popular culture have shaped our understanding of the Vietnam War.

Day One of the conference will focus on how the Vietnam War was represented in the media with particular reference to photography, documentary film and television.  Day Two will focus on the representation of the Vietnam War through popular culture, with particular reference to feature films and popular music.

Speakers will include veteran journalists Don McCullin, Michael Nicholson and Philip Knightley. Additional information including a link to the conference program is here.

The conference is produced in association with the University of the Arts Photography and Archive Research Centre (PARC) and the London College of Communication

Photograph by Don McCullin, Hue, Vietnam, February 1968.

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Ironing Out the Wrinkles

We appreciate rituals at NCN.  And surely the run up to a statewide, presidential primary election is nothing if it is not ritualistic.  And one need only look at the many slideshows on the recent Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary to take a measure of the homespun, hand shaking, baby kissing, “impromptu” barbershop/hardware store/local diner visiting, town hall meeting rituals that are repeated ad nauseum, state by state, party by party, and year after year.

Given that the current primary election season begin nearly a year ago and has been running virtually nonstop ever since, one might expect that we would have something to say about the way in which it has been documented photographically within the public, visual culture. But the truth of the matter is that the various campaigns have been something of an embarrassment, more a caricature of themselves than anything else.  If someone like Mel Brooks were to spoof the current contest for the Republican nomination it is impossible to imagine how he could cast it better than to have the candidates play themselves or how he could script it better than to have them repeat their own lines on cue.  We simply have not been able to bring ourselves to speak to the issue because, for the most part, the photographic record has followed the pattern of a timeworn template of visual tropes that have represented this campaign and the various pretenders to the title of “the not Romney” as if it was like any other. It isn’t, of course, but photographers have had a difficult time documenting the differences.

The photograph above may be a good star at challenging the norms, in its own way a perfect parody for the present primary campaign season.  One of the goals of a primary political campaign is to give the candidates an opportunity to metaphorically “iron out the wrinkles” in their positions and policies. That hasn’t happened, of course, as just about every candidate has taken his or her turn rising to the top only to fall all over themselves in slapstick fashion, their wrinkles intact and in most cases all the worse for the wear.   But in the end there is Governor Romney, his hair carefully coifed and even his American flag—captioned and signed—carefully (one might say “obsessively”) steam ironed so that none of its wrinkles will show. What began as a metaphor to explain the political process in the language of everyday life has returned, in all of its banality, as a literal practice.  As such, the photograph suggests, the stage is empty, as is the campaign itself writ large … little more than a vacant podium, a flag that is being prepared by a stagehand to give the illusion of being perfect, and an empty platitude.  It is hard to believe that this is any way to elect a candidate for the presidency.

Photo Credit: Jim Wilson/NYT

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Photographic Space, Museum Space

At least one of the figures in this photograph from the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is a sculpture, but how many?

Jim Dine‘s “Walking to Boras” occupies the center of the display space.  The pedestal and the four short poles for the ropes to prevent contact assure us that it is an objet d’art, just in case you had any doubt about a seven foot boy in lederhosen.  But what about the two figures on the left?

They are so perfectly caught in time, and so gracefully posed in a moment of dynamic equilibrium, and so absolutely isolated in visual space, where they are at once almost together and yet completely separate, and both specific individuals and social types. . . . The composition seems too good to have happened naturally, while it could be the real point of a larger composite grouping.  We look for the statue contrasted with the people around it, only to discover that the artist has tricked us into seeing statues as people.

Perhaps in the next millisecond the couple leaned into one another to confer or confide or otherwise get closer together, or perhaps a brief word or glance was enough to break the pause and they vectored off along the paths each was on, going in opposite directions in more ways than one.  Or perhaps they are still there, perfectly posed in a moment of aesthetic perfection, but of course inert.  But if they have moved on, what about the two figures on the right?

They certainly could qualify at statues, as their all too ordinary clothes and postures echo the sculptures of George Segal. And it would be a good joke, not to mention a moment for genuine reflection, for a museum in the Ozarks to feature its most local visitors as works of art.  And what if everyone in the room was a thing, a statue rather than a person passing through the aesthetic space?  Would the space become less welcoming or more stimulating?  More an occasion for reflection on art and life, or a disturbing walk through an uncanny valley of simulation?

Questions such as these are prompted by the photographer’s superb ability to recreate the deep experience of the aesthetic encounter as it is available in any well-designed art museum. Stated more simply, a good museum, like the art it holds, brings the spectator not only to see the artworks as they are, but also to see everything else aesthetically.  Nor need there be one definition or purpose for this kind of perception.  However it works, the result can be to see more of what is there to be seen, and with more clarity, insight, objectivity, empathy, humor, desire, and respect.  We can see how others are at once alien and human, typified and unique, needy and mindful, beautiful and doomed, achingly desirable and hopelessly out of reach, inhabitants of alternate worlds and caught in our shared catastrophe, exposed by the surface of things and forever unknown.

A good museum does that.  Photographs can do the same.  Photographic space can work like museum space: tuning the senses to see the artistry in ordinary life.  Admittedly, “museum” can be a ponderous word, heavily institutional and easily denigrated: “The real art is in the streets, not hanging on museum walls!”  But photographic space can seem too small by itself, and the artistry of the photographic encounter is in fact nothing less than entering a dedicated space for seeing anew.  And besides, much of the time photography already is in the streets.

The relationship between photography and the fine arts has a rich history, including early modernist avant-garde movements such as surrealism and Dada, use as a muse by major painters such as Francis Bacon and as more than that by photo-realists such as Chuck Close, late modern avant-garde movements such as pop art, and work by contemporary hyperrealists (and keep in mind that all such labels are only partially accurate), and not least by Cindy Sherman, who I put in a class by herself.  The photograph above was taken to accompany a New York Times review of the museum, and it serves that purpose well.  It surpasses that assignment, however, to capture something profound about photography itself.  Every photo of someone turns them temporarily into a statue.  Doing so doesn’t kill them, but it can bring the rest of us to life.

Photograph by Steve Hebert/New York Times.

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