In Stitches
embodied spectatorship and embroidered photographs
Ish Doney
Ish Doney S2161990 Masters Thesis
Faculty of Humanities, Leiden University
Masters in Media Studies, Film and Photographic Studies Supervisor: Helen Westgeest
Second Reader: Janna Houwen 14 March 2019
19,001 words
Contents
Introduction
3
Chapter One Embodiment through image and form
8
Chapter Two Digital reproductions and embodied spectatorship
23
Chapter Three Meaning and Feeling
40
Conclusion
57
Bibliography
59
Illustrations
64
Appendix
67
Introduction
Photography is a schizophrenic medium. To say ‘photography’ is to invoke its myriad personalities: the holiday snapshot, the fine art print, the advertising image, the cellphone selfie, the
daguerreotype, the family album, the list goes on. Each of these iterations requires a different approach from the viewer, from the tentative cradling of the cased daguerreotype, to the ritualistic turning of the pages of the family album, to swiping right for that ‘cute pic’ on the dating app Tinder. The different materialities of these photographs inform these different interactions. This thesis will focus on vernacular photographs that have been altered by artists stitching various forms of embroidery directly into the photographic paper, creating an interplay of thread, paper, and image.
Embroidery and photography each have their own baggage to carry, and the connotations surrounding one often contradict the connotations of the other. Where embroidery is painstakingly handwrought, the photograph is snapped in a fraction of a second; historically, embroidery has been equated with femininity, whereas photography has often been considered masculine; embroidery is 1 2
tactile and haptic, while photography elevates the visual, the optic. The combination of these opposing traits into a single work subverts the viewer’s assumptions about both mediums, and constitutes a specific spectator experience. By discussing these embroidered photographs through theories of embodiment and materiality from photography and other mediums, I will investigate the complexities of this experience.
Over the last three decades the humanities has undergone something of a material and bodily turn. Emphases on optical, symbolic, and semiotic readings have made room for 3
understandings centered in the bodies of readers and viewers, and the physicality of objects. These
1 Parker, 1984.
2 Knape in Johannesson & Knape, 2004, 10. Johannesson and Knape seek to address this assumption with their volume on women photographers. Knape notes that the relatively large number of female
photographers working in the late 1800s have been obscured by the use of male studio names, and lack of involvement with associations (2004, 9).
changes in focus have been more marked in some areas than others. Film theory, for instance, has made a radical move toward embodied spectatorship and understandings of materiality in the medium, a change of direction championed by theorists such as Vivian Sobchack, Jennifer Barker, and Laura Marks. In photography, we have begun to see a move away from a long tradition of ignoring the material form of the photograph. Elizabeth Edwards, Janice Hart, and Geoffrey Batchen have been forerunners in this area. However, no one theory of embodiment or materiality 4
as they currently stand can account for the complexities inherent in viewing the “hybrid objects” 5
constituted by embroidered photographs. By combining research from both fields I will examine what is at work in an embodied spectator experience with specific works from four artists using varied approaches. My hope is to provide insight into potential avenues and outcomes for embodiment with both these objects in particular and embroidered photographs more broadly.
Photography historian Geoffrey Batchen has put together an enthralling volume, Forget Me
Not, 2004 that seeks to unpack the nature and functions of vernacular photographs with material
interventions comparable to the embroidery in my objects of interest. While this book has been of great help to my research, it is concerned with objects made by laypeople for personal use. To unpack the viewing experience of artist embroidered photographs, I will compare this work, and other research into the material properties, tactile functions, and social roles of photographs to theories of embodied spectatorship from film, digital media, and painting. Broadly speaking,
embodied spectatorship acknowledges the role of the human body in the act of perception. Theories of embodiment are many and diverse, citing multiple, medium specific avenues by which awareness of an embodied reaction might be triggered in the spectator. To understand the avenues for
embodiment opened by the embroidered photographs this thesis is concerned with, it is necessary to employ multiple theories: from film theorist Jennifer Barker’s ideas surrounding tactility, to 6
semiotician and social critic Roland Barthes’ concept of the punctum. These many and varied 7
approaches are far from being pieces of a larger embodied spectatorship ‘puzzle’ that fit together
4 Theories centered on embodiment and/or materiality are growing in number and precedents, but should not be considered a majority.
5 Batchen, 2004, 48, 81. 6 Barker, 2009.
neatly. While there are references across works, many of these theories are disparate, and though there are overlaps, it is also necessary to understand the distinctions.
Theories of embodied spectatorship, as they currently stand, can loosely be divided into those concerned with materiality, and those that focus on image content. I will investigate the complexities of an embodied spectator experience with Italian artist Maurizio Anzeri’s (1969-) embroidered work Rita, 2011 (fig. 1.1), in order to examine how the relationship between image content and materiality inform this experience. Investigating this process will require an unpacking of current theories of embodiment, allowing me to consider what is and is not at work in the act of viewing Rita.
The theories of embodiment explored in chapter one each preference the spectator’s experience with an original work. This focus, along with the scarcity of exhibitions including embroidered photographs, raises serious questions about the involvement of the body in an
interaction with an online reproduction of such a work. Unpacking the possibilities for an embodied engagement in this context will not only require further examination of theories of embodiment, such as Michele White’s research into the relationship between the body and the screen in computer and internet spectatorship. It will also demand an understanding of the nature of digital
reproductions, both in terms of what is changed in the move from the original embroidered photograph to its online counterpart, and, more broadly, in terms of how viewers relate to digital reproductions. To aid in this discussion, I will consider the online reproductions of Diane Meyer’s (1976-) New Jersey IV, 2012 (fig. 2.1) and Francesca Colussi Cramer’s Emmeline, 2018 (fig. 2.2). These 8
works are particularly relevant as they reference the digital through the analogue materials of their construction.
Discussions of embodied spectatorship often fall within affect theory, an area of research that has gained momentum since the 1980s. The popularity of the term has led to multiple 9
interpretations, and sometimes frustration as to the exact meaning and relevance of affect. I will 10
follow the work of art theorist Jill Bennett, and literature and intermediality theorist Ernst van
8 Birth date unknown. 9 Alphen, 2008, 21-22. 10 Alphen, 2008, 21.
Alphen, who both define affect as a physical precognitive experience. For these theorists, affects 11
are complex bodily sensations and are important for their potential to spark creative and critical inquiry. For van Alphen, affects are social, arising out of an exchange between two bodies (only 12
one of which need be human). This work becomes particularly important in chapter three, where I 13
will undertake a close reading of Caroline McQuarrie’s (1975-) series Swerve (figs. 3.5-3.6). Film and media scholar Eugenie Brinkema also works with affect theory. Brinkema’s approach differs from other theorists in that she reads for affects, and investigates the relationship between affective and sign-based readings. This precedent is important, as the complexity of the objects in Swerve call for a reading of both signs and affects, and an investigation into the relationship between the two. However, my approach differs from Brinkema’s, as she considers her work “a de-contribution to spectatorship studies” – her work is extraordinary in that she takes an approach to affect that is not 14
interested in sensation or experience. My interest, on the other hand, is still very much involved with the spectator, and I will work with Swerve to try to understand the relationship between the textual, signifying elements and affective responses in potential spectators. The viewer’s physical experience is individual and based upon previous bodily experiences, but this is also true of other, cognitive and sign-based readings of a work. Insights can be gained by undertaking both forms of engagement.
Viewing an artwork with a focus on embodiment moves between a cerebral decoding of signs and an active, bodily engagement. For spectators, understanding and even embracing the body’s role in viewing can provide a more immersive experience of an artwork and further avenues to make meaning, validating non-cerebral responses to works. While discussions of embodied spectatorship themselves can become highly cerebral, translating this research out of an academic 15
context could have the potential to break down some barriers to relating to art. At the same time, the spectator needs to be aware that there is a risk that bodily senses may be manipulated in the immersion of the artwork. For this reason, research within academia is still vitally important. We must be able to critically engage with the embodied nature of spectatorship even if academic
11 Alphen, 2008, 23; Bennett, 2005, 7, 37-38. 12 Alphen,2008, 23; Bennett, 2005, 7, 37-38. 13 Alphen, 2008.
14 Brinkema, 2014, 36.
15See for instance, Sobchack’s work to unpick the figural and literal within the experience she classifies as carnal thoughts (2004, 53-84).
research in this area is difficult to navigate with traditional tools of enquiry. The variation in experiences of embodied spectatorship is also important to note, as it makes clear that certain people/objects/contexts will elicit a heightened bodily response. Understanding who/what/where might lead to these heightened responses allows artists, exhibitors, and spectators to explore new avenues of exchange, while also requiring certain ethics of use.
Chapter One
Embodiment through image and formTheories of embodied spectatorship have arisen in many mediums. From painting to film; dance to 16
architecture, theorists have been exploring different ways that art can activate a response in the 17
body of the viewer. Theories specific to photography have been thin on the ground, resulting in a need to cobble together research from different mediums, some of which touches on photography while not fully exploring the implications of the medium, in order to understand the nature of an embodied spectator response to a photograph. Relevant approaches from film and painting tend to be divisible into two categories: those that identify embodiment as activated by image content, and those that see it as responding to the materiality of the work.
Materiality is another quality that has been denied in the study of photographs until more recently. Theorists such as Edwards, Hart, and Batchen have been key in addressing this lacuna. 18
They have championed the importance of the materiality, particularly of vernacular photographs, to how we interact with and make meaning from these objects. Each of the case studies considered within this thesis involves an intervention of embroidery onto a vernacular photograph. Prior to this intervention, these images would have been engaged with in the tactile manner discussed by
Edwards, Batchen, and others. However, with the addition of the embroidery, the photographs 19
gained an extra layer of tactile appeal at the same time as they entered an art context where physical contact is forbidden. Italian artist Maurizio Anzeri has produced a body of work comprised of studio portraits over the faces of which he has embroidered elaborate geometric shapes. This chapter will focus on Anzeri’s Rita, 2011 (fig. 1.1), a work which takes the portrait of a young woman as its base. Anzeri embroiders an intricate mask onto this portrait, disrupting the vernacular image and changing the way in which the photograph is experienced.
16 Reason in Reynolds & Reason, 2012.
17Çelik in Jones 2006, 159-162.
18 Edwards and Hart have championed the inextricable link between image and material in making meaning from photographs (Edwards & Hart, 2004, 2).
The materiality of an untouchable object impacts the viewer differently than that of the haptically available vernacular photograph, moving the embodied nature of spectatorship to the center of the interaction between object and viewer. Part of what is productive here is the difference between the experience of viewing a vernacular photo, and that of its embroidered counterpart. But more than that, we must readdress the distinction between image content and material form
manifested in so many of the current theories of embodiment. Understanding what is at work in a viewing of Rita will require the merging of these two approaches and an understanding of how form and image inform each other and a viewer’s experience. To accomplish this, I will work with
research on both materiality and embodiment, and find the overlapping points between these theories, whilst also acknowledging their points of departure. I will investigate some of the key theories of embodiment from film and painting, paying attention to how their media are understood to elicit embodied responses. Understanding these approaches will allow me to return to Rita to investigate the complexities of the interplay between materiality and image content that makes the experience of viewing this work so specific.
Western art history has long been criticised for its ocular-centricity, which positions the spectator as a pair of disembodied eyes. The rise of affect theory since the 1980s has sought to balance this 20
disparity. At this point it has been established that the viewer’s body has a role in the viewing experience. From Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a founding figure within phenomenology, to 21 22
neuroscientist Alain Berthoz, a consensus has been reached: “All perception is embodied 23
perception.” What remains necessary to the discussion, is how different objects, contexts of 24
viewing, and individual viewers illicit different experiences of embodiment. In order to establish the distinct character of the viewing experience of Rita and embroidered photographs like Rita, we will begin by considering modes of embodied spectatorship relevant to the experience of a vernacular photograph.
20Çelik in Jones, 2006, 159; Bazin, 2004 [1958], 12; Marks, 2002, xiii. 21 Brinkema, 2014, xi-xii.
22 Merleau-Ponty, 2012 [1945]. 23 Berthoz in Esrock, 2010, 226. 24 Barker, 2009, 17.
Art historians Michael Fried and Ellen Esrock both work to re-evaluate the theory of
empathy within painting. Robert Vischer developed the definition of empathy (Einfühlung) in the late nineteenth century. A theory of empathy already existed, pertaining to the ways in which people can relate to and feel for one another. Vischer adapted the theory to apply to spectatorship of art, describing a way in which the viewer activated the artwork through a bodily projection within the frame. Vischer used the phrase “kinesthetic imagination” to articulate how the viewer might 25 26
move themself within a painted landscape. He also explored how viewers can identify with a 27
pictured object, using theories related to dreams to back-up this assertion. Broadly speaking, these 28
aspects of empathy can be defined as projection and identification, and it is these aspects that have survived in the work of Fried and Esrock. Projection details a “feeling in,” whereby the viewer 29
positions themself within the object or environment (be it actual, represented or entirely imaginary), and simulates what this would feel like. In identification, similarities between the subject and object 30
are highlighted, either through idiopathic identification, where the subject imagines the object as similar to them, disregarding their differences, or through heteropathic identification, where the subject imagines themself as similar to the object, thereby taking on the qualities of the other. 31
Importantly, Vischer’s theory was particularly concerned with realism, often relating to works of landscape, portraiture, and street scenes, equivalents of which can be found in vernacular
photography. This focus was partially responsible for the theory’s fall from favour because it was generally held not to apply to abstract painting. 32
25 “Feeling in” is also the literal translation of Einfühlung. Esrock, 2010, 218-219; Nowak, 2011, 304. 26 Quoted in Fried, 2002, 37.
27There is clearly some awkwardness in the grammar of a singular gender-neutral pronoun. However, gender fluidity and gender non-binary identifications are a key part of our re-balancing of gender power and supporting the normalisation of these pronouns is a part of a wider fight to claim a space for all genders not only within academia but society at large.
28 Fried, 2002, 37.
29 Esrock points out that it is these aspects which Fried focuses on in Menzel’s Realism, noting that these are the less radical components of Vischer’s original theory, and aspects which already had some standing in psychoanalytical approaches (2010, 230).
30 Esrock, 2010, 218; Nowak, 2011, 302. 31Alphen, 2008, 28.
32 Esrock, 2010, 219. This concern was not unanimous, Theodor Lipps, and even Vischer himself believed that this form of empathy could also be applied to abstract images (Nowak, 2011, 306).
Film theorist Vivian Sobchack’s idea of carnal thoughts is one of the leading theories of embodiment in the context of film. Sobchack describes her physical response to a film, suggesting that it is her body that perceives the images, sometimes before her mind has processed what it is her eyes are seeing. For Sobchack, this phenomenon takes place in the space between the figural and 33
the literal. She is concerned with the idea of as if, quoting critics who use this phrase to explain their experience of involvement with particular films. Sobchack argues that as if does not go far enough. The experience is real and concerns the whole body, while it is clear that the film spectator cannot wear an actor’s heavy skirts, or eat an onscreen meal, they do feel and taste these things. This is a dispersed experience that takes place as an exchange between the spectator and the film, where neither the body in the seat nor the figure on the screen is wholly embodied, but rather the body experiences sensations from both planes. Despite the assertions of Berthoz, Merleau-Ponty, and film theorists such as Barker regarding the embodied nature of all perception, Sobchack argues against photography as a medium that elicits embodied spectatorship. Her logic is focused on the temporal 34
differences between film and photography, stating that film invites a lived, embodied experience as “a “coming-into-being” (a presence always presently constituting itself)” while photography “functions to fix a “being-that-has been” (a presence in a present that is always past).” When 35
viewing a film, the spectator is bound up in an unfolding time, in which they are constantly situated within a present moment with the anticipation (and eventual fulfillment) of a future moment to come. The viewer of a photograph, on the other hand, is faced with a past moment, one that is brought into the present only as an artefact. Looking at that moment is always looking back. For Sobchack, one of photography’s defining attributes is its ability to commodify moments. By 36
capturing the moment, Sobchack believes, photography creates a “thin, insubstantial” space which 37
can be held but cannot be inhabited, and therefore denies embodied spectatorship. While her
33 See Sobchack, 2004, especially 53-84. This discussion borrows from an earlier essay, ‘Disembodied Eyes, Disembodied Image’ (Doney, 2018, unpublished MA paper).
34 While Sobchack refers to photography generally, her logic is best applied to vernacular photographs, as she does not unpack the often less specific temporalities of fine art photography. Sobchack also argues against embodied spectatorship within electronic media. This will become relevant in chapter two.
35 Sobchack, 2004, 146.
36 Sobchack discusses photography in the context of Frederic Jameson’s connection between realism and market capitalism (Sobchack, 2004, 141-143).
arguments are compelling, and she references Barthes with regards to phenomenology of the photographic, and obliquely with her phrasing of “...that-has been,” she fails to address the concept of the punctum – the pricking, bruising affect of a personally poignant feature of a vernacular
photograph. Barker has described this affect as “unmistakably physical”. This suggests that the 38 39
that-has-been which Sobchack sees as distancing, may very well be part of what elicits an embodied
spectatorship of photographs.
For Sobchack, embodied spectatorship is strongly related to projection and identification. It is not just that the spectator inhabits their own body, but also the body of the film (perhaps through a specific onscreen body, but more likely as a dispersed experience of multiple actors, actions, sensual experiences, and even backgrounds and objects). It is this very specific definition of the 40
term – not only an awareness of the body but a physical involvement with what is depicted onscreen – which Sobchack argues does not apply to photography. However, embodied spectatorship as I address it is expanded, argued by the research of Barthes, Marks, Esrock, and Barker, whose work I will return to in a moment. While a spectator may not be able to inhabit the time of the photograph, they may still relate to and be touched by the person or scene depicted. Embodiment can also encompass the feeling of one’s body in the presence of another body, or in the presence of texture and materiality. Esrock identifies three modes of attending, or ways in which a spectator might engage with an artwork: “the spectator looks into a painting”, “the spectator looks through a painting”, and “the spectator looks at a painting”. In looking into a painting, the spectator animates a scene 41
38 Barthes, 1993 [1980]. 39 Barker, 2009, 31. 40 Sobchack, 2004, 53-84.
41 Esrock, 2010, 236, italics original. Esrock focuses on the example of Adolph Menzel’s Balcony Room, 1845, making clear that these modes of attending can each be applied to the same work, even while certain works, or parts of works, lend themselves more readily to different modes. There are certain similarities here with Richard Wollheim’s understanding of seeing-as or seeing-in, in that a ‘representational seeing’ is required to perceive the image from the brush strokes (for example), however, Wollheim’s categorisations become concerned with the minutiae of optical looking, in which the focus of the look may be changed. In many ways this becomes a matter of semantics in which Wollheim tries to make clear the very act of representational looking, in which the literal properties of a work (colours, brush strokes, marks, layers of paint) are denied in order to see the figures that these properties attempt to depict. See Wollheim, 2015 [1968]. There are also parallels here with Bolter and Grusin’s work on immediacy and hypermediacy (1996; 1999), and I will return to this work in chapter two. However, like Wollheim, Bolter and Grusin are not concerned with embodiment. Esrock, rather, is concerned with situating these different modes of looking within a bodily experience, which is what makes her model the most pertinent here.
while remaining outside of it. Esrock elaborates by saying the viewer “does not imaginatively enter through the bodily senses of touch and related sensations.” However, a lack of admission to the 42
frame does not prevent the viewer from experiencing the work as another body, in much the same way as Marks describes with haptic visuality. Instead of mastering the work through a penetrating view, the gaze moves over the surface, acknowledging the work as having its own physical presence. Likewise, Barthes’ punctum does not require admission to the frame, rather a salient detail reaches out of the image, bruising the viewer with an immediacy that can make the trigger of the experience difficult to recognise. Sobchack’s understanding of embodied spectatorship falls under Esrock’s 43
second mode of attending, wherein the spectator looks through the painting. I will argue with Rita that projection and identification are still at work in the viewing of photographs, even if, by
Sobchack’s definition, photographs present a scene that cannot be inhabited. Esrock’s third mode of attending, where the spectator looks at the work is more akin to Barker’s work on tactility, or more widely to theorists working with materiality. This mode of attending acknowledges the materiality of the work as an artefact; an object with weight that appeals to the physicality of the body, not only to the fingertips, but to the skin and muscles as organs of touch.
Despite Sobchack’s arguments to the contrary, there is a compelling relationship between vernacular photographs and projection and identification as avenues of embodiment, given the spectator’s tendency to speak of and even treat the photograph as if it were the thing depicted. Barthes famously described the photograph as having a referent that adheres. He was attempting to 44 deal with the difficulties of engaging critically with a photograph, given that the spectator so often relates to what is depicted, rather than the photograph as an artefact. In short, he was grappling with the viewer’s tendency to look through a photograph into what is pictured there. Many readers will recognise the experience of smiling at a photograph of a loved one. There is no question that this image is not the person depicted, and yet the spectator may respond as if it were. This dichotomy 45
places us back into Sobchack’s linguistic territory between the figural and the literal. Art historian and cultural critic W. T. J. Mitchell acknowledges this dual way of thinking about images, where one
42 Esrock, 2010, 236.
43 Barthes, 1993 [1980], 25-26. 44 Barthes, 1993 [1980], 6.
45Parts of this discussion were articulated in an earlier essay, ‘Disembodied Eyes, Disembodied Image’, (Doney, 2018, unpublished MA paper).
can scoff at the idea of an image having life and power, and yet would struggle to take a photograph of one’s mother and gouge out the eyes. 46
Batchen discusses the role that tactile engagement has historically played in our relationships with vernacular images. Using examples of cased daguerreotypes and jewellery which integrates photographs, he establishes a history in which touch is designed into the display of these images. 47
The uses that Batchen sets out make a clear case for understanding vernacular photographs as images that serve more than a visual purpose. Part of what brings loved ones comfort from these keepsakes is the ability to touch and caress them, as well as a vision of the familiar face which is, for whatever reason, not physically present. The tendency to treat photographs of loved ones as objects with feelings (kissing, caressing, placing in a prominent position both with the intention of seeing and being seen) suggests that our relationship to vernacular photography has always been more emotional than intellectual, and the urge to touch images as we would a loved one suggests there is a strong physical involvement inherent to this interaction.
I noted earlier that if we are to work from a position that all perspective is embodied, we must unpick the ways in which different people, objects, and contexts of viewing elicit different embodied responses. With regards to the object of spectatorship, one need only point to the experience of viewing someone else’s family album to see that the sense of one’s body in the act of viewing is not the same with all photographs. The affect of such a viewing is tied to one’s ability to 48
relate another’s family to one’s own. For instance, in Barthes’ viewing of the James Van der Zee’s
Family Portrait, 1926 it takes him some time to work out what it is about this image that pricks him.
Ultimately he identifies the punctum as a necklace that reminds him of a similar one worn by his own
aunt. Even in art, photographer Thomas Ruff has encountered a comparable problem in the 49
reception of his work, becoming frustrated with the viewer’s tendency to try to relate the work to their own lives rather than appreciating the photographs as the pictures they are. 50
46 Mitchell, 2005, 9. Mitchell cites this example as a pedagogical exercise employed by Tom Cummins. 47 Batchen, 2002, 68-69; Batchen in Edwards and Hart, 2004, 32-47; Batchen, 2004, 76-77.
48 Gillian Rose argues that “knowing the people depicted is vital to the viewing of family photos” (2010, chapter 3, no page numbers). This stance is not supported by Marianne Hirsch, who sees the conventions of family photographs as supporting identification through their conventionality (1999, xiii).
49 Barthes, 1993 [1980], 43-44, 53.
50"You probably project your own life into the picture... Whereas if you think in terms of projected surfaces, then the seen object has nothing to do with it anymore. The reaction to the "star pictures" is similar to the
Variations in experience are part of why so many theorists employ a phenomenological approach when writing about embodiment, because this approach acknowledges the ephemeral and subjective nature of the experience – in fact, it insists upon it – without denying its importance to academic study. This thesis employs multiple medium specific theories of embodiment in order to point to commonalities of experiences, in an attempt to overcome the specificity and subjectivity inherent in outlining a bodily sensation of spectatorship. The variations within embodied
spectatorship call for accounts of specific experiences, rather than universal theories. However, I will work to ground this discussion through commonalities with sensations felt by other theorists.
Blake Stimson, in his afterword to Photography and Ontology, 2018, expresses a concern for the dangers of phenomenology, stating:
...photography risks what Adorno calls the “constitutive problem” or the facile and opportunistic conceit that we are constituted by our phenomenological relationship to the world rather than by our reflective, communicative, collective, institutional relation—I am what I perceive, what I feel, what I want, what I photograph, what I master, what I possess rather than what I socially and politically negotiate with others. 51
Stimson hereby expresses a concern about privileging experiences over critical engagement. Film scholar Iuliia Glushneva combats this apprehension of slipping into solipsism, stating that a critical connection with the external world is central to the ethics of a phenomenological approach. Both 52
Susan Sontag’s On Photography and Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida employ phenomenological approaches and remain some of the most quoted works on photography. While Stimson and Adorno’s concern has validity, experience is not by definition acritical, as Sontag’s and Barthes’ works clearly attest.
effect portraits have. When people look at them, they mix them up with the real thing, holidays in Majorca with beautiful star-studded skies - or the houses, they look at the curtains and try to figure out what sort of people live behind them... But why can't they go up and say, aha, big photographs, big head, take the pictures as a picture and say, thank you, Mr. Ruff, well done?' interview with Stephan Dillemuth (quoted in Wesseling, 2017, 21).
51 Stimson, 2018, 168 referencing Theodor W. Adorno. 52 Glushneva, 2017, 11-12.
Vernacular imagery has well and truly entered the gallery space. In the 1960s conceptual artists adopted a snapshot aesthetic to escape the confines of what was considered fine art photography at the time. More recently, snapshots, studio portraits, postcards, and advertising images have been 53
reordered and recontextualised into books and exhibitions. Embroidered interventions into 54
photographs take this move further. Instead of co-opting an aesthetic, or recontextualising an image, they physically reconfigure the photographs into new objects. This raises questions regarding how an embodied experience of looking at an embroidered photograph might differ from looking at a vernacular image without such an intervention.
Anzeri’s embroidered photographs displayed in Saatchi Gallery’s 2018 Iconoclasts exhibition are mostly around 8x10”. The webbing of Anzeri’s stitches creates grotesque masks over the
portraits. These masks work both as additions, creating intriguing colours and forms, and as subtractions, obscuring the photographic face beneath. Often beginning from a circle around one eye, the shapes spiral out, distorting the natural curves of eye sockets, noses, and cheekbones as they go. In Marcel, 2011 (fig. 1.2) purple thread builds an intense shadow under one eye, then moves outward to delineate a bulbous nose before switching to yellow, then black thread to complete the mask. Rita, 2011 differs from this standard in that it has holes for both eyes and also one for the mouth. While the stitching on Marcel flattens the planes of the image so that the thread replaces the photographic face beneath; a subtraction in which mask obscures face, observing Rita constitutes a different experience. Possibly because more of the facial features are discernable, focus is pulled back and forth between the image plane and the thread on top of it. This elicits particular discomfort, as the viewer is not only aware that the mask distorts the structure of the face,
manipulating ‘Rita’s’ expression into three exclamatory ‘o’s of surprise, it also draws attention to the fact that this mask is stitched directly into her face. From a distance she could be a character in a beret, but close up she has been disfigured. This can evoke a dispersed sense of how thread would pull on the plump skin of Rita’s lips, or for that matter, the viewer’s. This is not a direct experience; there is, of course, no pain, but rather a visceral feeling of repulsion, evoked by the bodily 55
53 Wall, 1995.
54 Galani & Moschovi, 2014; Zuromskis, 2008.
55 Barker has established a connection between the viscera of the spectator and that of the film, centered on the idea of intermittent movement (2009, 120-144). I use ‘visceral’ more generally here, as an internal, ambiguous, and extremely bodily sensation.
simulation of the textures of thread and flesh being forcibly intertwined. This has some rather grotesque parallels with Esrock’s experience of the gauzy curtain over the wooden door in Menzel’s 1845 painting Balcony Room. Esrock cites Elaine Scarry’s argument that readers’ visualisations of something gauzy moving over something solid are particularly vivid, and positions Menzel’s curtain and door as a “kinesthetic analogy”. For Esrock, there is a tension here of curtain catching on 56
splinter. I posit that this tension is amplified in Rita where the experience of thread snagging on fabric is transposed to a nagging feeling of that same sensation through flesh. The impact of this experience relies on the viewer’s identification with Rita as a person. It requires an animation within the picture frame that imbues Rita with the ability to feel pain and discomfort, and puts oneself in her place. This act of empathy is particularly interesting as the ‘wounding’ that the viewer may experience is extended to Rita. This is not a photograph of a person who has been punctured; it is the photographic paper – the integral support of both silver gelatin image and embroidery – that bears the needle holes, and yet, it is the photographic face that translates the act of embroidery to one of violence.
One might wonder at the extent to which the embroidery and the photograph can be considered to have merged. The black-and-white photographic image is contained beneath the surface of the photographic paper, while the coloured threads sit above this surface, separated by texture and plane. However, one must acknowledge that the threads puncture the paper, extending beneath the photographic skin of the image, and creating a more compelling convergence of image and embroidery than would be possible if, for instance, the thread was glued to the photograph, rather than stitched into it.
Barker’s work on tactility is pertinent to the experience of viewing Anzeri’s portraits. The idea of tactility defines materiality as an avenue for embodiment. Projection, identification, and carnal thoughts, are all concerned with the content of the image. They fall into Esrock’s second mode of attending in which “the spectator looks through the painting”. This mode of viewing is 57
complicated by the addition of embroidery, because the intervention forces the spectator into
56 Esrock, 2010, 233-234.
57 Esrock, 2010, 236. In Bolter & Grusin’s terms this can be read as immediacy, a mode of spectatorship in which the medium disappears. Bolter and Grusin discuss immediacy through virtual reality and digital interfaces where the mediums themselves aim for this level of transparency. They trace the quest for immediacy back to the Renaissance and linear perspective (1999, 21-26).
Esrock’s third mode of attending where “the spectator looks at the painting as an artifact”. This is 58
not a clean break; instead there is a push and pull between looking at the object and looking through the object into the image. The denial of material form required for the kind of immersive response 59
encapsulate by Sobchack’s carnal thoughts is complicated by the perpetual reassertion of the material qualities of the photograph by the intervening veil of thread.
Barker’s theory of tactility is concerned with the materiality of film, in which the material form of the film can be difficult to pin down. For this reason, her discussion moves from image content to screen to projection in an attempt to unpack the tactile ‘feel’ of the image within a larger framework that constitutes the film as a body. In photography the material form of the object is 60
much easier to discern. In a similarly corporeal move, van Alphen discusses the ways in which artist Célio Braga constitutes photographs as skins, surfaces that function as boundaries, separate inside and outside, and invite touch. Barker’s tactility works through the experience of touch felt by the 61
viewer, despite the absence of physical contact between viewer and film. In Barker’s case, this touch is not possible. While this impossibility is removed in the case of Rita, it is useful in understanding the experience of viewing embroidered photographs because it outlines an interaction with material form that is not present in the theories of embodiment I have outlined thus far, but also, does not
58 Esrock, 2010, 236. This can be compared to Bolter and Grusin’s concept of hypermediacy in that it points to an awareness of material form. However hypermediacy is more complicated, as it “acknowledges multiple acts of representation” and “offers a heterogeneous space” (1999, 33-34). In this way hypermediacy
acknowledges the representation’s nature as representation, but without denying its ability to represent. A still life painting, for instance, is not seen merely as paint on canvas, but as paint layered on canvas in such a way as to depict a bowl of fruit. In this way, the materiality of the painting is acknowledged and so is the subject, but now as an un-reality. This is in direct contrast to immediacy in which the image content is experienced in the denial of the medium that is used to depict it. Esrock’s category is more straightforward, pertaining specifically to the materiality of the work, its nature as a physical artefact.
59 This experience is supported by the work of Batchen, Edwards, and Hart. Batchen acknowledges a similar experience in his work with “hybrid photo-artifacts” (2004, 39-40). I will look more closely at this work in chapter 3. Edwards & Hart make clear that the complexities of this viewing experience can be experienced with unembellished photographs, provided the viewer acknowledge the materiality inherent in the photograph as an object (2004, 15).
60 Barker, 2009.
61 Alphen, date unknown. Braga works with mixed media, and van Alphen makes a strong case for
understanding many of his works in relationship to the complex imageries of skin and organs. Braga’s works such as Untitled, 2004 and Untitled (Skin), 2010 which involve many detailed cuts into photographs of human skin are particularly relevant here.
rely on physical contact, in the way that theories of materiality, such as those discussed by Edwards and Batchen often do.
The embroidered interventions disrupt the illusionistic spaces of the photographs, creating an obstacle – a masking effect – between the spectator and the imaged world, complicating the process of projection and identification. As suggested by the above description of Rita, involvement with the image plane becomes multi-faceted as the push and pull between image and thread creates a new and more tenuous illusionistic space. Moving beyond the image of Rita, we must consider the materiality of the work. More integral than the intertwining of thread and lip, is the intertwining of thread, paper, and silver gelatin surface. Tactility can help us to understand an embodied form of spectatorship not reliant on image content or physical contact. Barker describes stop-motion animation as an inherently material form, one which speaks to the viewer’s fingers. This is primarily a matter of the texture of the image rather than its content. The grit of dust, the wetness of meat, the smooth and rough surfaces of cogs and dolls. Barker is quick to point out that touch is not only a sensation reserved for the hands; for her, the skin, musculature, and viscera are all involved in an intimate relationship between film and viewer. In stop-motion, materiality and the way it evokes an 62
itching in the fingertips becomes key. This focus of attention on the fingertips fits with Berthoz’s 63
assertion that “perception is simulated action”, a phrase the neuroscientist uses to indicate that our muscles and sensory organs play through interactions in anticipation of experiences. 64In viewing
Rita the object-nature of the photograph comes to the fore, and one is confronted by the perception
of the texture of photo-paper and layers of thread, a perception in which the fingertips are as integral as the eyes. Barker’s writing on tactility in stop-motion also draws important parallels with child’s play. In Barker’s words:
Child's play is as complex as adult passion: it is a combination of tender affection for the toy in question and also, simultaneously, the desire to take one's toy apart to see how it works. 65
62 Barker, 2009, 3. 63 Barker, 2009, 137.
64 Berthoz in Esrock, 2010, 226. 65 Barker, 2009, 144.
The itch in the spectator’s fingertips upon viewing Rita is a simulation of what touching the work would feel like – the slight twang of threads, the bumps of the ply of the embroidery floss, the friction of clammy skin against silver gelatin surface – and also a wish for greater involvement. Beyond the playing through of the instance of physical contact, there is a desire to remove the work from its frame, to see the messy back of the image, and possibly even to pull the threads back through the needle holes in order to see behind the mask – the pricked remains of Rita’s face. I mentioned earlier that the decline of Vischer’s empathy was due in part to the rise of abstraction. It was generally believed that projection and identification were not valid responses to abstract imagery, which was considered avant-garde and masculine, while empathic viewing came to be seen as detail oriented and feminine. This somewhat artificial distinction brings us to another 66
form of embodied spectatorship with an interest in texture, film theorist Laura Marks’ theory of haptics and optics. Marks makes a distinction between haptic and optic images and haptic and optic viewing. While haptic perception describes a relation to the world through physical touch, both internally and at the surface of the body, haptic visuality is defined by Marks to name a process in which “the eyes themselves function like organs of touch.” In optic visuality the eyes pierce the 67
image surface to explore the illusionistic space depicted, whereas haptic visuality is concerned with surface and texture, the eyes caress the surface of the image. Marks explores optic and haptic
imagery, providing examples from video art that encourage different forms of visuality. Marks’ work helps to inform Barker’s, who uses the former’s theory of hapticity to understand how an image can make sense to the body when it is as-yet unclear to the eyes. Marks and Barker work with video 68
and film, respectively. While they are both concerned with the material qualities of these mediums, the nature of the mediums make establishing the corporeal body of the works quite complex. The surface and texture in Marks’ cases are situated behind a screen. The texture is often the result of the technologies artists use, and while the relationship with the viewer is centered around touch,
touching the screen would clearly not provide access to the texture of the work. The photograph has
66 Esrock, 2010, 219; Nowak, 2011, 306. As mentioned in an earlier footnote, this is not unanimous, Lipps and Vischer believed empathy was not foreclosed by abstraction. On a similar note, Marks aligns her theory of haptic visuality with “Gaylyn Studlar’s theory of masochistic identification” wherein the viewer identifies with a scene or surface rather than an individual character (2002, 18).
67 Marks, 2002, 3. 68 Barker, 2009, 24-25.
a more singular material form, allowing for straightforward physical touch. Barker and Marks’ work is important because they look at the impact of texture when touch is denied. It is also important to note that haptic visuality is a mode of looking which can be applied to optic images. These two forms of visuality exist on a continuum, and viewers will move between the two modes in the act of observation.
A gendering of Marks’ theory would, in many ways, work in the reverse of the gendering of spectatorship of abstraction and realism within empathy. Haptic images are abstract in their lack of separation between figure and ground, however, Marks points out that this is better described as decorative and cites what is often considered a feminine relation of close attention to detail. Conversely, optic images feature a distinction between figure and ground, depicting an illusion of realistic space which provides the viewer with the distance required for projection and identification, relations which Marks identifies as part of a masculine tradition of visual mastery. Marks is careful to point out the arbitrary nature of gender roles in this distinction. These modes of spectatorship are not inherently gendered or aided by any particular anatomy, rather they are visual strategies that can
be adopted by anyone, though spectators may be cultured more towards one mode or another. 69
Marks identifies embroidery as part of a tradition of haptic imagery. As the medium falls outside of 70
her area of enquiry, she does not elaborate on this classification, but her comment makes hapticity an important avenue for exploring the specificity of embodied spectatorship in regards to
embroidered photographs.
Marks traces her usage of the term haptic back to Alois Riegl – a curator of textiles who developed the term in relation to Roman art – connecting the term with the hours Riegl would have spent in close scrutiny of carpets. Abstract patterns and decorative forms create a textural plane 71
which does not invite the penetrative and mastering view required for projection and identification. Instead, they encourage the spectator to interact with the work as a body in the presence of another body. If we consider textiles as inherently tactile as a result of this lineage, then Rita is at once a haptic and an optic image. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to describe it as an optic image obscured by a haptic layer. Ana Araujo describes Riegl’s understanding of haptics as,
69Marks, 2002, 6-7. 70Marks, 2002, 6. 71 Marks, 2002, 4.
“...communicat[ing] a strong sense of tactility; it calls for the near look, but then it blurs the vision.” This too is encapsulated by Rita, where the spectator is drawn in to look closely at the object, to
72
take in the detail of the thread and to attempt to discern the photographic image behind it, however, the more the viewer attempts to draw optic information from Rita the more potential there is for the push and pull of the two planes to interfere, reducing the vision to an interplay of textures. This frustration of the eyes makes the role of the spectator’s body evermore prevalent. Without the quick and clean access of visual mastery, the viewer must negotiate a bodily relationship with the work, which allows for it to be experienced as a coherent whole, even as the interplay of image and form frustrate a solely visual interaction.
The specificity of viewing Rita demands that current theories of embodiment and materiality be combined and repurposed to deal with the at once inextricable and irreconcilable relationship between image content and materiality in this work. Working through theories from painting and film, repurposing the theory of empathy as used by Esrock, tactility from Barker, and hapticity from Marks makes clear that multiple theories of embodiment are required to understand this
relationship. The push and pull between photograph and thread forces the viewer to adopt multiple modes of attending. The embroidery at once amplifies the materiality of the photograph,
heightening its position as an artefact. At the same time, the viewer may seek to look past the thread to the photographic face beneath. The threads at once obstruct the illusionistic space of the image, while simultaneously creating a new space informed by the interplay of image and thread. Rita’s status as both haptic and optic image is key to this tension, just as the spectator’s body is key in experiencing the interplay of multiple forces that are at work in this object. Rita exaggerates tensions that are present even in unembellished photographs. The work presents an opportunity to expand current theories of embodiment and materiality not only to create an approach that embraces both materiality and image content, but further, to lay the groundwork for a theory of embodiment that might be applied to photographs more broadly.
Chapter Two
Digital reproductions and embodied spectatorshipThe theories of embodiment that I discussed in the previous chapter each relied upon the author’s presence in front of the work. Each of them privileges the encounter with the thing itself: from Fried’s sojourns to Berlin to visit Menzel’s paintings; to Sobchack’s discussion of viewing the Piano in a cinema, rather than at home on DVD. Barker even goes so far as to posit a relationship between the spectator’s body and the film’s body that rests heavily upon the apparatus of analogue film, suggesting by implication that digital cinema constitutes a different spectator experience. Art in the age of its digital reproducibility relies a great deal on interactions with online reproductions. For many works, the majority of their interactions with an audience will be mediated by online reproductions. 73
Given this development, two things in particular are at stake. First, we must acknowledge that the position of the reproduction has undergone a radical change since cultural theorist Walter Benjamin’s discussions of loss of aura in the 1930s. Second, given the prevalence of online
interactions with art, theories of embodiment concerned only with experiences with original works have a limited scope. We must investigate the possibility of embodied spectatorship as it pertains to digital reproductions. What complexities are at work in such an exchange? How might this
interaction be triggered? How might it differ from the experience of the same object in the flesh? Embroidered photographs offer a useful object of discussion. Despite the physical
differences between photographic prints from the same negative and potential changes in file-type, size, color-space, and resolution in copies of a digital photographic file, establishing an original photograph can be linguistically convoluted. By embroidering into a photograph, the artist pricks and augments the paper and image in a way that makes it an undeniably unique object, allowing for a
73Haden-Guest, 2014; Hudson, 2013; Popper, 2017; Quito, 2018; Smith, 2011; Thorpe, 2014. A large scale academic investigation into online art spectatorship has yet to be undertaken, and is beyond the scope this thesis. The authors listed each investigate the prevalence of sales of art online, which has overtaken in-person purchases. Many such purchases are made without the buyer seeing the artwork in person. These phenomena suggest a widespread familiarity with an online context for viewing art, such that a physical experience of an artwork is in many cases not considered necessary in a decision of whether or not to buy.
more straightforward distinction between the original and its reproductions while still calling for a consideration of issues specific to the medium of photography.
To aid in this discussion, I will focus on the online reproductions of analogue works by two artists who employ a similar intervention, but with rather different results. Diane Meyer’s work New
Jersey IV, 2012, (Fig. 2.1) from the series Time Spent that Might Otherwise have been Forgotten, 2011-2016,
depicts a child in a brightly patterned jumper standing before a Christmas tree. Meyer has used the embroidery technique of cross-stitch to give the appearance of squares of pixelation over this 74
analogue colour family photograph. These stitches reduce the image sections into simplifications of
their component colours, in much the same way as downsampling in jpeg compression. Francesca 75
Colussi Cramer’s piece Emmeline, 2018, (Fig. 2.2) takes a black-and-white vintage studio portrait postcard as its base. The portrait shows a young woman standing with her hands resting on the back of an empty chair. Onto this postcard Cramer has cross-stitched squares of colour, in some cases following the lines of the image, and in others imagining detail where there is none. Where Meyer’s work creates a focus on surface and colour, lessening the gap between the embroidery and the image, and flattening the whole, Cramer’s piece widens this same gap. Even when following the lines of Emmeline’s hair and blouse, there is a sense that the cross-stitch squares provide views from a different world, one that has little to do with the original postcard. To understand the potential avenues for an embodied response, we must investigate what has changed in the digital reproduction of these embroidered images, which I will do using Barbara Savedoff’s framework for examining photographic reproductions.
Anzeri’s Rita can also be found online as a digital reproduction, and it would be possible to undertake a similar investigation with this work. However, Emmeline and New Jersey IV are of particular interest because they reference the digital through analogue media, a reference that is complicated by the online reproductions of the works.
74Cross-stitch is a practical and hardy form of counted stitch embroidery. It involves the creation of x-shaped stitches, achieved by crossing the thread over itself. These ‘x’s act as squares and are often used to create pictures by building up fields of colour.
Understanding the experience of a reproduction in the digital era is no small task. In his “evolving thesis” on ‘Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction’, Douglas Davis states, “There is no clear conceptual distinction now between the original and reproduction in virtually any medium based in film, electronics, or telecommunications. As for fine arts, the distinction is eroding, if not finally collapsed.” This suggests that in easily reproducible mediums, the divide between an original and 76
its reproductions has become unproductive, and indeed, difficult to define. In more traditional mediums the distinction still exists, but has become complicated and less obvious. In his infamous essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility’, Walter Benjamin pointed out the problems of identifying one ‘authentic’ print in a series of prints from the same negative. 77
At Benjamin’s time of writing, photography occupied an uncertain position within fine art. To Benjamin, the question of whether photography should be considered art was less important than “whether the very invention of photography had not transformed the entire nature of art”, a 78
question which his discussion of the loss of aura and the change in art valuation from ritual value to exhibition value goes some way towards answering. Despite Benjamin’s disinterest in whether photography could be considered art, popular views at the time coloured the ways in which photographs were received. Less than a decade before Benjamin’s article was published, Jan Tschichold observed that “[t]he artistic value of photography has been disputed throughout its history”, a debate which seeped into popular understandings of the medium, continuing even after 79
professionals and academics considered the matter closed. For the majority of the population 80
photography could not be considered art in its own right, but was rather a tool through which real artworks, such as paintings and sculptures, might be disseminated. In such reproductions, there was a clear reduction from the material original to the flat, black-and-white, scaled down photograph –
76 Davis, 1995, 381.Written between 1991 and 1995, Davis’s work borders on digital utopianism, likely due to the state of the internet at his time of writing.
77 Benjamin, 2002 [1936], 6. 78 Benjamin, 2002 [1936], 8.
79 Tschichold in Hershberger, 2014, 5.
80 A 1941 newspaper article announcing the establishment of a photography department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York situates the move within an ongoing debate over whether or not the medium should be considered art (Brock, 1941, SM14).
there could be little confusion about what constituted the reproduction. This relationship is now 81
less clear. Not only has photography moved firmly into an art context, at the same time, by establishing the concept of vintage prints, the artworld has found a way to discern authentic prints from a photographic negative. 82
The normalisation of online viewing of art further complicates matters, as the photographic reproduction is no longer clearly or solely a reproduction, but rather one version, or one way of seeing an artwork. Art and media studies researcher Anne Ogundipe, in her investigation into museum visitors’ participation with online reproductions of art works, found the reactions of her sample group were partially informed by their familiarity with the platform through which the works were viewed. Participants who were not familiar with a particular platform tended to focus more on the platform than the artwork presented there. Further, photographic reproductions were 83
considered more natural and therefore more transparent than other mediations, such as 360 rendering, despite providing less information, because they are such a familiar medium of reproduction. This prevalence is important because as online interactions with art become the 84
default, the specificities of this mediation will become progressively more transparent, until the position of the online version as reproduction can be ignored given the primacy of said version. New media scholars Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin’s work on immediacy and hypermediacy supports this assertion. Bolter and Grusin use these terms to describe the relative focus on (hypermediacy) or denial of (immediacy) the medium in the experience of depicted content.
Together they highlight the relative transparency of digital media such as virtual reality, and graphic interface design, tracing a move towards immediacy that they see as beginning with single point perspective in Renaissance art. In their own words:
81 We should be clear however, that black-and-white analogue photographic reproductions of works such as paintings were much more realistic than the prints that preceded them, meaning that the risk of conflating original with reproduction was much more pronounced than it had been previously (Savedoff, 1993, 457). 82 The vintage print is a print made by the photographer at a similar time to when the negative was created. See for instance, Laura Noble’s book The Art of Collecting Photographs, 2006. Often there will be more than one vintage print made from the same negative, so this is not the fulfillment of a quest for the ‘original’ print, but it is an application of art historical valuing systems that seek authenticity and elevate the artist’s hand. 83 Ogundipe, 2018, 11-13.
84 Ogundipe, 2018, 15. Savedoff also notes the primacy of photographic reproductions and the conflation of the reproduction with the original (1993, 460).
...a transparent interface is one that erases itself, so that the user would no longer be aware of confronting a medium, but instead would stand in an immediate
relationship to the contents of the medium. The transparent interface is one more manifestation of the desire to deny the mediated character of digital technology altogether. 85
This asserts the trend towards immediacy and transparency in digital media, a move which is key to understanding how spectators experience online reproductions. 86
Philosopher of photography and aesthetics Barbara Savedoff argues against the conflation of the analog photographic reproduction with the original artwork. She explains that such a lack of distinction relies on a reduction of the original solely to those aspects that can be reproduced through photography, most notably the image content. The experience of the original, as it relates 87
to materiality and temporality is lost in its translation to the flat, motionless photograph. Here again, we can see the divide between image content and materiality that informed my discussion of Rita. Savedoff is interested primarily in analogue photographic reproductions of paintings, however, the issues she raises are also relevant to digital reproductions.
The reduction of material form, and live, temporal experience does not reduce the power of the reproduction. Werner Schweibenz, working with Savedoff’s arguments, investigates how
familiarity with reproductions can alter the experience of viewing an original artwork. Schweibenz details the cases of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper, c.1520, and Johannes Vermeer’s The Milkmaid, c.1660, providing accounts of how reproductions (and, in the case of The Milkmaid, specifically
85 Bolter & Grusin, 1996, 318.
86 It is important to note, however, that digital spectatorship is trained. Bolter and Grusin support Simon Penny’s assertion that ‘intuitive’ digital interactions rely on “culturally familiar object[s]” (1999, 32). Michele White makes clear that internet spectators are designed. Their actions are guided through metaphors and depictions of materiality, and again, “the downplaying” or relative transparency of the interface (2006, 19). This process is two-fold, beginning with the transposal of material signs, for instance, Bolter, Grusin, and White all reference the use of ‘desktop’ and related folders and mailboxes to acquaint users with different digital functions. At the same time, interface designers rely on users familiarity with these metaphors and their functions, which allows designers to make the interface more and more minimalist, subtly referencing
functions through discrete icons. Consider for instance the move from a search bar consisting of a rectangle with the word ‘search’ and a magnifying glass icon which could be typed into, to only the magnifying glass icon. All of this suggests a transparency or ‘natural’ interaction grounded in familiarity rather than immediacy. 87 Savedoff, 1993, 455-456.
digital reproductions) inform viewings and establish visitor expectations. For Savedoff, the power 88
of the reproduction is not only at play in the experiences of a museum-going public, but further, has had unprecedented implications for the production of art. She notes that “[o]ur dependence on reproductions favors art which reproduces well…”. In the context of contemporary art, the 89
“widespread use of photographs and slides to select artworks for exhibitions and awards almost ensures that photogenic work will be selected and supported over non-photogenic work,” leading to the success of such works over those whose nature cannot be captured in photographs. This 90
encourages artists to produce works that reproduce well. To work with Savedoff is to understand that even as a reproduction is necessarily a reduction, the proliferation of such copies has had a marked effect on the consumption and production of art. Given this state of affairs, it is necessary to acknowledge the space between the original and its copy, but at the same time we must
investigate the authority invested in the copy by many spectators of art. As mentioned at the outset of this chapter, embroidered photographs offer a way to investigate the complicated role of
reproductions in photography through an object with an easily defined original. In discussing the reduction of paintings to photographic reproductions, Savedoff establishes a framework that considers eight aspects of the work that are altered or excluded by reproduction: colour, surface, scale, physical presence, frame, the wall on which the work is hung, the angle, and distance of view. 91
I will follow Savedoff’s framework as it pertains to surface, scale, distance, and framing in order to address what has changed in the digital reproductions of New Jersey IV and Emmeline.
The surface of the work is perhaps the most crucial change. The embroidery thread is
flattened to the same plane as the photograph. Properties that rely on the three dimensionality of the thread, such as the movement of shadow through changes of lighting and spectator position, are reduced to static screen surface. This fact is of particular interest in light of the immediacy of
viewing digital reproductions. When viewing only the online reproduction, the sense of loss of three dimensionality is obscured by the privileged position of image content, and transparency of digital 92
88 Schweibenz, 2018. 89 Savedoff, 1993, 461. 90 Savedoff, 1993, 461. 91 Savedoff, 1993, 457-460. 92 Savedoff, 1993, 455-456.
