Photoworks 1965 – 1982

In the early 1960s photography was used to record Happenings. The concept of the Happening—according to which events themselves could become art forms—introduced the idea of art as an experience rather than as an object to be acquired. Performance art followed on from Happenings and further reinforced the notion of art that could not be for sale. Performances were also documented by photographs.

By the late 1960s conceptual artists were using photography in a way that made no reference to its previous uses and technological functions. Art was identified as being idea, knowledge and information, and was documented with photographs, films and video-tapes. The Land-art artists of the 1970s used similar methods to document their works, which were usually temporary structures or ephemeral events that had been set up in remote areas of the landscape.

For some artists of the 1960s, particularly those involved in the art forms classified as Happenings and Performances, the role of the photograph was primarily one of recording and documenting. In retrospect, the photograph—as the only testament to a specific art event—becomes a substitute for that work of art or the principle it upheld. The photograph not only captured actual moments from ephemeral events, but also gave documentary form to the artists' ideas and propositions.

Some of the photoworks seen here, however, are not purely documentary in nature but are in fact early examples of an aesthetic which continues to inform contemporary art. These photoworks illustrate the introduction of photography as a surrogate art work.

The majority of the photoworks exhibited have links with Performance, Conceptual and Land art. Nevertheless, a close analysis of each artist's intentions will suggest that there are as many deviations and oppositions within each classification as there are links and parallels. This exhibition offers, then, a visual dialogue of contrasts and parallels, a few of which are examined below.

Conceptual art affords a convenient starting-point for a discussion of photoworks produced over the past two decades. Joseph Kosuth was one of the first artists in the 1960s to use photography as a component of the work rather than as a record of it. The photowork in this exhibition follows Kosuth's series One and Three, which he produced in the mid-1960s. The series used three codes of communication: the actual, the pictorial or representational, and the written. Thus, in One and three mirrors, 1965, the viewer is presented with three panels: an unframed mirror, a photograph of the same mirror in situ and a dictionary definition of a mirror. Each of these three codes communicates the concept of 'mirror'.

Another artist who comments on codes of communication is Jan Dibbets. Dibbets' photoworks are primarily concerned with the difference between the mind's perception of three-dimensional reality and a two-dimensional photographic copy of that reality. In Comet horizon 6°-72° sky/sea/sky, 1973, the artist has made twelve photographs of a horizon. The horizon, traditionally depicted as a horizontal line, here curves across the wall in a comet shape.

Land-art artists integrate art and the environment, and the works are specific to the location in which they are created. Having installed the work, the artist leaves it to be eroded, so that what is produced is always a transient art form. In general, earthworks involve elements in nature that have ritual associations, and this focus is particularly evident in the works of Richard Long. Moreover, the aura of transience in Long's photographs draws attention to the concepts inherent in his projects.

The same may be said of a number of other Land-art artists who install rudimentary structures in inaccessible parts of the landscape, not as consumable or marketable art objects, but as symbols of transience. In time, then, the photograph becomes the only record of the idea.

Another artist working in the landscape, but on a different scale, is Christo. He is best known for his Land-art projects such as Wrapped coast, Little Bay, 1969, Valley curtain, 1971, and Running fence, 1976, but the visual effects of these projects are only one aspect of the artist's activities. Almost more important to him than the finished piece is the process of planning and executing a project: fundraising, lobbying for support, negotiating with Government agencies and individual land-owners, and working with a large number of skilled and unskilled people. Christo allows others to photograph and film his large projects. In Packed coast project for Australia, near Sydney, 1969, he presents the concept before it is actually realized. Works of this kind function both as studies for the project and, when sold, serve as certificates of their purchasers' financial support for it.

Of a different intellectual orientation are the works of Bruce Nauman, who, in the late 1960s, produced a number of photoworks that commented on the colloquial use of the English language, while at the same time making ironic reference to the creative plight of the artist. For Feet of clay, 1966-70, Nauman literally placed his feet in clay and photographed them. Likewise for Bound to fail, 1967, he photographed himself bound with a rope.

In Entering into my own work, 1971, Giovanni Anselmo makes similarly ironic reference to a figure of speech—that of the Expressionist artist's idea of being 'in the work'. Anselmo's wit is aimed at the formalist doctrines of abstract art. His large canvas is not a field of paint, but literally a photograph of a field. The idea of artists entering their works is rendered literally: Anselmo set his camera on a delay mechanism, pointing at a field, and then ran into it.

Private tableaux have been set up for the camera in the photoworks of Arnulf Rainer, Lucas Samaras and Cindy Sherman. The earliest Rainer photograph in this exhibition, Blaustern, 1969, is a self-portrait posed in a traditional portrait style. The angst of the artist is then expressed through the use of wild strokes of crayon drawn over the photographic image. In Selbsterrustung, 1971, and Face farce, 1971-72, Rainer went on to explore the connections between so-called normal human emotions and anxieties and those induced by drugs or madness. To achieve a physical semblance of anxiety, the artist works himself into a frenzied state. This state is articulated by exaggerated actions and intense facial expressions which are photographed. Rainer thus appropriates emotional and anxious states of being, altering with each the photographic image of his identity. By contrast, Death mask, 1978, appropriates the identity of an anonymous person— someone who has died—but by painting over the photograph Rainer changes it into an image of intense emotion.

Lucas Samaras also reveals a side of the self which cannot be expressed in mug-shot photography. His large-format Polaroids entitled Sittings, 1980, are decorative portraits of friends who agreed to pose naked so as to avoid the associations which clothes would necessarily give their personae. The artist's main objective is to produce a portrait and not just a photograph of someone naked. He achieves this by creating theatrical settings and lighting effects which serve to enhance the personality of the sitter. In Samaras' portraits the sitter is placed in the centre of the composition—which includes the figure of the artist staring into the camera with cold, calculating eyes, his finger on the remote-controlled shutter button. The artist here projects his role as creator and manipulator of the photographic image.

While both Rainer and Samaras derive their aesthetic from the Expressionist tradition, Cindy Sherman uses media images as source material for her photographs. In each work she draws on the mythology of American stereotypes as projected on film and television. Her earlier black and white photographs are imitations of film stills. Produced in the size and format of promotion stills, Sherman's images show the artist herself in some of the roles played by actresses in the film industry. In the large-format colour photographs in this exhibition, Sherman (still using herself as the protagonist) extends the idea of the stereotype to comment on the role of contemporary women and men. These larger photographs are more ambiguous and often more threatening in mood.

Victor Burgin uses the photographic image to comment on patriarchal dominance in western society. In his series US77, 1977, the artist is particularly concerned with the external signs of male capitalist power in American society, as evidenced in architecture, on billboard posters, and in other media images. Like Bruce Nauman, he makes use of colloquial expressions as puns in many of his titles; in Burgin's case, however, language itself is distorted to fit the photographic image. Whereas Nauman uses the pun in a detached and ironic way, Burgin's titles such as Patriarchitecture, Omnimpotence and Graffitication are direct comments on society.

The work of Duane Michals exemplifies the use of narrative in photography. The result, in many of his images, is an overall ambiguity of meaning.

The few photoworks cited here serve merely to draw attention to the scope of the medium. The aim of this exhibition is to present the new forms of visual expression and the conceptual propositions that have been generated by photographic artists in recent years.

Grazia Gunn
Curator