Furious Ennui

This is a very rough synopsis of something I hope to explore in much more depth, possibly in the form of a monograph of some form, but it is relatively contemporary. Feedback & criticism is very much appreciated.

Natalie King’s interview with Bill Henson for the Monash Gallery of Art Foundation gave a full house magnificent insight into Bill’s very early career, but, for me, opened up new realms that were not explored that may shed some light on Bill’s work, and the position of photography as a fine art, ranking with music, sculpture, literature and painting.

My hypotheses is that Bill Henson’s work, and the assertion by Pierre Bordieu that photography is middle-brow entertainment, can be best described by the innate tension of Nietzschhe’s Apollonian vs Dionysian conflict.

Pierre Bordieu argues that photography is middle-brow culture. Fine art photographers the world over would dearly love to see this hypotheses put thoroughly to bed. The uncomfortable fact is that, as photographers, we face a lot of competition. It may be a glib, throw away line to say that just because your mobile phone has a camera, it doesn’t make you a photographer, but it does. It may not make you a fine art photographer, but let’s face it, when was the last time you saw a parent whip out a block of stone and chisel a quick sculpture of junior being cute?

It comes down to context. From its earliest days photography was regarded as a document of record, replacing painting, which I argue gave painting the scope to go beyond. Photography, with the stigma of the camera doesn’t lie, and a picture tells a thousand words as rods for its back, has never been able to escape that baggage in the minds of most people. Painting moved rapidly from Neoclassicism and Romanticism into a maelstrom of manifestos, light, colour and movements in all the most chic cities. Painting stopped being reportage, vainglory or instruction and became art for art’s sake. Photography hasn’t been afforded that liberty, being as it is such a prevalent and powerful record of events, whether it be of international significance like 9/11, or at a micro level capturing a 5 year old’s birthday party. People no longer necessarily expect a painting to look realistic. When confronted by a photographic image that doesn’t look realistic, they are challenged.

Apollonian art, according to Nietzsche, is the “plastic”, that is to say, physical artefacts. Sculpture is the most Apollonian of the high arts. Apollo represents order, workmanship and craft. Apollonian art, in its idealised form, creates a permanent, immutable object. Dionysian art is exemplified by music. Music is that most hedonistic of the arts, and I would argue that dance is its equal, though Nietzsche makes no mention of the Terpsichorean disciplines, in that a given performance is impermanent. Photography slips neatly between the cracks, capturing as it does that essential moment, as Henri Cartier-Bresson put it, but then, by virtue of a series of artistic choices made by the photographer (type of film, over/underexposure, selective depth of field, composition and focus in camera, then choice of film developer, temperature, agitation and time, and then choice of printing method, paper contrast, paper type, print size, developer, post-processing, framing or bordering or the digital equivalents) starts to weave an unsteady path from Dionysian capture to Apollonian artefact (print).

A further polarising of the Apollonian vs Dionysian is seen in Apollo’s representation of what Schopenhauer termed principium individuationis, the principle of the individual, representing logic, rationality and skill compared to the mob persona of Dionysian excess with its conspicuous consumption of wine, its orgies and its chaos. Some argue that Nietzsche is intimating that the best art is dualistic, and therefore combines the best elements of joyous hedonism and rational craftspersonship. Is Pierre Bordieu’s “middle-brow” photography actually Nietzsche’s ideal?

Henson’s description of his photographic processes is another manifestation of the dichotomy. On the one hand you have the technical expertise in terms of use of light, tone and composition, balanced by the photographs snatching of one instant in time, a moment than can never be again. His subject matter is all about tension, whether it be the tension of emerging adulthood, or storms in the Greek islands. Here is a man who commissioned a stainless drum be made to exact specifications so he could make colour prints in his bedroom, and yet whose images are perceived by some, I would argue narrow minded and petty, people to be extremely Dionysian. A statue doesn’t change between viewings. Weathering and other such considerations aside, it is immutable. The moment of a photograph is well nigh impossible to recreate, but the end product, the print, is a thing of relative permanence. The moment is fleeting, but the capture is permanent.

Even the very act of taking a fine art photograph pits Apollo against Dionysus. The Apollonian structure of the technical aspects of photography, the set up, the lighting, f-stops, lens lengths, are all just the environment for that oh so brief moment of hedonism when you choose to depress the shutter button. Further to that, we, as photographers, can choose an Apollonian approach to our work, setting up elaborate studio scenes, or a Dionysian approach, like we see in most street photography. Some, like Ansell Adams and, from his words, Bill Henson, are Apollonian in their print making, controlling temperatures to within 0.5C, developing to the second and ruthlessly editing any image that does not meet the standard into the bin. Others, like the toy camera artists, are far more Dionysian, allowing chromatic aberrations, light leaks, development faults and the like to form the backbone of their statement.

Which brings us back to Pierre Bordieu’s “middle-brow” assessment of photography. Unlike architecture or sculpture, photography is accessible to billions of people. That in and of itself makes it very low-brow. However, when realising its full artistic potential, great photography can be every bit as aesthetic and memorable as any of the arts. And therefore decidedly high-brow.

Tension, and resolution, are essential in much great art. For the photographer this applies to the media (document of record versus art), the processes and the finished product, which presumably will be some how imbued with tension and resolution. Each photographic artist has to find within themselves a balance of conflict between Apollo and Dionysus.