AUTOPSIES RESEARCH GROUP

The Bridge Over the Moat, Anonymous, 1896, silver gelatin print with original graphite retouching


EXHIBITION REVIEW

Haunting the Chapel: Photography and Dissolution
Daniel Blau Gallery, London
1 September - 6 October 2011


At its invention, photography was considered otherworldly: the stuff of ghosts. The spirit photographs of the late nineteenth century exemplified this impression of the ethereal, as haunting figures were made to appear within portraits after the discovery in the 1860s of the effects of double exposure by William Mumler. ‘Haunting the Chapel: Photography and Dissolution’ exposes these spirits of photography through a cross-century selection of altered, or altering, images. Besides original examples of spirit photography - including one of Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote a pamphlet defending the veracity of the medium - the exhibition features x-ray images, photograms, silver prints and cyanotypes, documenting as much the dissolution involved in photography’s very processes as the disintegrating nature of its subjects. 

The skeleton of a building on the ‘Rue du Bac’ sits between decay and demolition. Nadar’s ‘Foyer of the Paris Opera after Burning in 1884’ is deserted and still; elsewhere an anonymous building is licked with flames. There are Gothic cathedral exteriors and ornate, but empty interiors. A dilapidated stairwell from 1870 disorients like Escher, with unperceivable depths. The intricacies of a ‘Mandalay Palace’ (c. 1890) are eaten away by black patterns. Ancient gardens tangled with plants and palms appear in the travel photography of Emile Gsell (1838 - 1879), the first to represent on film the temples of Vietnam and Cambodia. Architectural juxtaposition occurs between a silver print of New York’s 1920s skyline and black and white vernacular images of rural farms, or the bunker-like dwellings of volcanic ‘Stromboli’. U.S. Army aerial shots show the gridded city lights of 'Toyama, Honshu’, or the spiralling smoke of an Oil Refinery that has just exploded. These last images are haunting for their purpose in recording, their documentation of destruction, which appears, from a distance, abstracted. 

Such pieces of early photography sit alongside more recent works - a freckled portrait of Berenice Abbott by Walker Evans, or a Chris Marker still in which the side of a man’s face on roadside concrete is cut diagonally by a falling jet of water. But it is the early specimens, often anonymous, that are mysteriously compelling--discovered, you imagine, upon abandoned desks. The exhibition represents that which is about to be lost, or those who already have been, teetering on the point of disappearance, knocking at the door of the atrocious or the alienated, holding the hand of the fragile. The curators have chosen to frame the exhibition a quote from Borges's ‘The Immortal’: ‘They are moving because of their phantom condition; every act they execute may be their last; there is not a face that is not on the verge of dissolving like a face in a dream’. With the long exposure times of photography’s early technologies, bodies in Italian piazzas or French town squares have become almost-extinguished silhouettes. Kinetic blur jolts the just-frozen moment, and the fall of the shutter fails to quite capture the movement of figures in time.

Hannah Gregory

Our fridge is covered with a curious collection of reject passport photos. Some of the sitters have their eyes closed as they blinked with the flash, others are frowning, and some of the photos are overexposed or the image is washed out. Although at the time the subjects probably winced at the pictures, I never tire of looking at them as I open the fridge door. None of the photos are more than ten or fifteen years old yet they look so different to the passport photos today. Some are printed in richly coloured hues, others in a lush, velvety black and white.

Old photo booths took four photographs in succession, and each was exposed in sequence onto a strip of photographic paper. During the last decade almost all automatic photo booths have been replaced with digital successors, coinciding with new stricter regulations of passport photo standards. These machines usually have a computer screen allowing you to view the identity photograph taken, and have the choice to reject or accept it. On completion of the sitting, a single photo is reproduced three or four times, or sometimes four photos are taken at the same time by four lenses, resulting in minute differences in the final product.

If the technology of the digital machines differs from the traditional designs so has the experience of having your photo taken in a new booth. These brightly lit cases with automated voices piping out instructions are so impersonal and daunting that it is hardly surprising that the resulting pictures are as hideous as they are dismally pale in colour. Gone is the choice of coloured curtain from the old machines (blue, brown, orange), the disconcerting reflective pane of the camera, and the blinding flashbulb. While new machines quickly produce an often poor image with a quality rarely being better than a domestic ink-jet printer, the old booths churned out shimmering strips still damp from the processing chemicals.

The hit-and-miss character of the old photo booths seems to be well and truly a thing of the past, as is the joy of being able to deliberately mess up a couple of the four photos with a silly face, or a special message to a loved one. In the world of digital photography, mistakes, mess and unpredictability no longer just happen but have to be meticulously planned.

In response to a yearning for the old machines, and the warmth of a grainy image, a few restored 'analogue' booths have made a comeback in a number of European countries, in trendy arts venues, theatres and cafes. In Paris, three machines are in use in Palais de Tokyo, Espace Ephemère, and Le Centquatre, where Photomaton devotees can have their fix, and a new generation can discover the lost marvel that was once found in every train station.

Digital photo machines are now trying to put the fun back in back in the booths, offering sitters the chance to superimpose their face next to an image of the current favourite pop star or actor. But nothing can compensate for the loss of the creative possibilities of the four flashes of old passport photos, and the richness of quality and depth of the image.

Here is a link to a company that restores and hires old-style photo booths in France: http://www.lajoyeusedephotographie.com

Jacob Paskins