Voyeurism & Extra-Intra Diegetic Gaze. Task 3.

© Robert Maplethorpe.

                        
This photograph by Maplethorpe has a very strong and direct element of voyeurism.

The viewer is given direct access to an erotic and intimate sex act we are invited to stare, to gaze, we are free to watch...

Maplethorpe has ensured we can do this primarily through the framing of the photograph.
The woman's head is cropped off, we can only see the top of the mans head (though this is quite ambiguous because it could be a woman).
The woman is dressed in a basque, stockings and shoes. The clothing adds to the appeal of the photograph making it more pornographic and erotic. If the woman was naked this would change the meaning and the symbolism of the image from erotic and possibly pornographic to something more loving and meaningful.

The gaze of the viewer is made easier because, our stare, our curiosity, our gaze goes unmet and unchallenged. We are free to watch and look as long as we wish, we can look upon this photograph and its intimacy because there is no extra-diegetic gaze coming back from the performers to confront our invasion on there act of eroticism.
Our gaze is further strengthened because the couple are anonymous, we cannot see their faces, they in turn cannot see ours, there is no air of confrontation, no eye contact, no facial expressions to challenge those looking upon this act of love making.
This greatly strengthens the power the viewer over the viewed a constituent of panoptiscism a theory of developed by the French philosopher Michel Foucault.
We are free to look for as long as we wish, unnoticed and unchallenged.

Documentary Photography in Context. Task 2.

Freed had himself embedded with the New York Police. He felt that they'd been receiving a 'bad press'. They were, at the time, being blamed for all of society ills, held as scapegoats for everything from the Vietnam War to race relations and poverty (in New York). Freed took a sympathetic view, acknowledging that the Police were working class people too, just trying to do their job.

Freed's images were published in The Observer, The Sunday Times, Stern and the New York Times. His aim was to raise awareness of the difficulties/risks of the average New York Police Officer, together with the sort of dreadful sights they would encounter during their working day.

Leonard Freed, New York, 1972.

There can be no doubt that Freed considered his photography to be indexical, his images were taken almost as police forensic shots directly recording the evidence of the crime scene. It's possible that this image of a murder could be used in different context than Freed intended: not only could there be a betrayal of the victim within this image, but of Freed's original intentions. Freed had sympathies towards the civil rights movement so it could interpreted that the black victim within this image is a victim of racially motivated crime. The alternative view: that black people were responsible for most of the violent crime within New York at that time...

Ron Haviv, Panama, 1989.

Haviv is a co-founder of the Paris based VII photo agency. His aim, via photojournalism, is to make the people accountable for their crimes within his imagery. They can be condemned. He says  ''yes, the work does become a body of evidence". As evidence, it does need to remain in its original state, unaltered, real.  

The Worlds Top Photographers, Photojournalism, Andy Steel, Rotovision, P 54.

Haviv seems intent on creating a body of evidence that could be used in a prosecution to bring the persecutor to justice and, of course, justice to the victim. 

Haviv used the same publishing vehicle as Freed: the large multi national publishing houses. His audience is the same as Freed, though it should be noted that the modern 'audience' is likely to be much better informed and possibly more cynical: the digital age has added the ability to alter and doctor images for political or social purposes. It could therefore be said that to keep documentary photography indexical to maintain the integrity of an image, a photographer is pushed further into greater risk. Haviv has been close to losing his life several times.

     

Panopticism- Surveillance and Voyeurism. Task 1.

Thomas Ruff

This image is blurred and grainy, inviting scrutiny and close study on the part of the receiver. The result? We end up looking even more closely at the detail of the image, working hard to work out what it is… and then feeling vaguely self-conscious, almost wanting to look around and see if we’ve been caught looking at the elicit part. The desired effect.

It could be interpreted that Ruff is giving us a veiled message about the freedom of thought and expression in the modern world: on the face of it, there is access to explicit materials – yet there are imagined or untenable barriers to the free viewing, selling, publication, discussion and acceptability of the images.

A significant number of the photographs in the series are black and white. Black and white photography generally evokes a romanticised response, an implication that doesn’t necessarily sit comfortably with erotic images. This is one of the paradoxes that it seems Ruff has been keen to exploit. Additionally, the black and white image makes it more difficult to distinguish the lines between the subjects, meaning they are not well defined. Again, this requires the receiver to focus harder still on the image. When they realise what the image is, they may realised that they have been ‘duped’ into being more voyeuristic than they believed themselves to be.

This image at first view is a simple, intimate portrayal of a loving relationship. The eye at first focusses on the strong and defined arm of the male, offering a protective cover for the female; her hand with a slight and tender touch in contrast.
Its representation is traditional in outlook.

It is only when we examine the image more closely that we recognise the intimate sexual act taking place. To have noticed it, we must have been drawn in. Is this because of the deep black of the female’s clothing? Or because we follow the naked man’s form downwards? The artist seems to want to leave that to the receiver.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

The subtlety of the surveillance in this Bresson image, taken in Trafalgar Square on the day of King George VI’s coronation, amuses me...

The portrayal of ‘surveillance’ is somewhat ironic: The crowd is clearly paying attention to something over the right shoulder of the photographer and so, on first glance it does seem as though the surveillance of the crowd by the photographer is going unnoticed. And then you search the faces of the crowd. It becomes apparent that the photographer has not escaped the glare of everyone and is indeed under surveillance himself from the young boy in the centre of the frame. The irony is heightened by the fact that we cannot quite judge whether the boy’s natural child-like inquisitiveness is the reason for his keen eye – or whether it is just his own notion/liking of ‘being surveyed’ through a lens. 


There is a man lying (hurt, injured or drunk) discarded, like the litter, on the floor less than three feet away from the spectators – and yet not a single eye is focussed on him or his struggle.

The composition of this image is so perfect that, were it another photographer, we would be convinced it had been staged.

Positioned perfectly above the ‘fallen man’ is the young boy. Both occupy a central position in the image. The boy, the only person in the image to be caught looking directly at the photographer, appears to stand out from the crowd literally as well as metaphorically – he is not crushed together with the herd, he stands apart, alone. 

The aloof dignity and the idea of ‘looking the other way’ synonymous with post-Victorian Britain is neatly represented literally.

Kohie Yoshiyuki

The third image is one I have chosen because it crosses the boundaries between voyeurism and surveillance, muddying the distinction between the two. 

In an interview, the curator responsible for exhibiting this work said: “I turned out all the lights in the space, and gave each visitor a flashlight. That way I was reconstructing the original settings. I also blew the photos up to life size.” Quizzed further, he replies: “that's how I wanted them to be viewed. I wanted people to look at the bodies in the photographs an inch at a time. But this is an uneasy situation. When it's completely dark, the whole photograph is illuminated, but the viewer looks at it section by section. My original concept involved a corridor where points of light would be focused on the photographs. Viewers would look at them slowly ... carefully.”

http://www.americansuburbx.com/2009/03/interview-nobuyoshi-araki-in.html 

After considering the theory of panopticism, we question how we would actually make use of the flashlight and which sections of the image we would feel comfortable pausing over – especially when other people, potentially lovers of art – are watching. There is a paradox between the artist’s courage and nerve in taking the image and the receivers’ hesitancy in enjoying the art.

In this image, it is the power of suggestion that is strong. Knowing the series, we know that the men in the image are ‘peepers’. Their stance and posture tells a story of three men trying to conceal their presence: one crouching low, in hiding, leaning slightly to enhance his view, one bending over the other, semi-straight in the hope that it’ll be accepted that he is not looking too closely, seeking a little solace in the solidarity of others in his pursuit, and the third, bent at the waist. Focussed. Intent. Hiding but ready to run. The fact that they are in a natural setting, framed by the plant life, makes them seem incongruous and unnatural. The fact that the photograph has been taken using infrared gives it an air of reconnaissance, almost as if the viewer themselves is spying on the voyeurs with night vision.

Leeds Street Photography

"If you can smell the street by looking at the photo, its a street photo." Bruce Gilden.


With these words as our inspiration were sent out on a half day project to capture images that could match Mr Gilden's mighty words.

Street Photography takes days of careful observation and patience to be able to take in the 'feel' of a place. We had half a day.

So, with this in mind I wanted to capture some images that have a somewhat comedic elements to them, images that juxataposition the reality with the fantasy.