Barry Massoni's "Naked Girls and Other Offenses"

      I’ve already written about what I consider the worst offender in modern photographic art, the "postcard" photo- a pretty picture, nicely printed, sold as art. In this essay I’ll flail at another windmill of the photographic art world, what I call "icon photographs," which are photographs where artistic or cultural shorthand is used as a brace to sustain the art.

      Perhaps the most common of these is the naked girl photograph. You see them in virtually every gallery, and they’ve been there since photography was invented. From a human perspective there may be nothing in this world as intriguing as a nude woman. However, the icon is so powerful that it can blind us, and it’s easy to create a shorthand of repetition which becomes a dogma that kills art. The easiest to remember-black and white is art, color is porn. So what happens? We end up associating all black and white nudes as art and don’t really look at them. For every brilliant nude I’ve seen, I’ve seen a dozen pieces of banality clogging gallery walls. The reason? We’re following the shorthand instead of really looking at the photo. Photographers, gallery owners, and consumers should always look twice when dealing with the nude. It’s easy to confuse God’s creations with our own.

      Another, and relatively new type of icon photography, is the "creepy social commentary photograph." You’ve seen them, vaguely surreal and distressing works-studio shots of a five year old girl with a cigarette in her hand, children dressed in elaborate and expensive cowboy costumes scowling at each other like angry monkeys. A spin off seems to be large scale location shots of expressionless teenagers in torn Tommy Hilfiger jeans standing in bleak environments-in front of a crumbling factory or graffiti covered walls. It seems to be art as long as the teens are vacuous and the setting desolate.
Galleries sell them as modern day Walker Evans’, proof that things have gotten worse, that society is crumbling around us.

      Many of these photographs are called "documentary," though I wonder how many of them are genuine and how many are "Jerry Springer genuine"- mostly real, or philosophies believed real, but hyped for the camera because reality is too boring and we can never be bored-boredom being defined as any quite moment. I’m not sure if these photos are necessarily "cheap shots," but they create such an immediate, visceral, and emotional response that I think we have to recognize the shorthand being used.

      They play upon our fears the way horror movies and politicians do. How much more difficult (or genuine?) is it to come up with a truly surreal photograph that isn’t posed-or at least that hasn’t been set up like a row of dominoes ready to fall? And when they topple the photographer releases the shutter and says, "See, told you," in silver halides at the exhibition. At the very least we should look at these with the same critical eye we observe still life paintings with-as very few of us believe these are truly random collections of objects. We know they are posed, but it’s harder with photographs, still harder with photographs of people. Photography’s "reality" leads (deceives?) us into accepting them as real. (Keep in mind that Evans got the same criticism, so maybe I am way off base here, but they are bit much for me.)

      And frankly, I’m not certain that there’s anything "wrong" with the use of iconography in photography (or art in general)-literal, figurative, or as artistic shorthand, but by the same token, if it’s carried to the extreme, what prevents the photographer from photographing the Mona Lisa and claiming it an original artistic work? In this case the photograph becomes what every photographer fears, merely a duplication device, and it really pisses of Da Vinci’s ghost when we claim artistic symmetry with him. The gray area comes when we photograph the Mona Lisa and its frame. That frame ads a layer of meaning beyond the Mona Lisa itself. (Remember, the nude is always black and white, the children always in fantastic costumes, and the teens in desolate locations.) Now normally, when we view the Mona Lisa we see it, not its frame. When viewing a photograph of the Mona Lisa and its frame we see both. This is what Andy Warhol and the entire pop art movement was exploring-what happens when an artist begins using industrial tools of mass duplication like the camera?

      Are they (we) even producing art anymore? Is what Warhol did any different than what Herman Moore, Lehinart Printz, or the Eames’ did with industrial design? Should there be any difference? In terms of this discussion, is what Warhol did any different than what Strand or Stieglitz did? All used mass reproduction mediums. All are valuable, yet one is a pop artist, two are fine artists. Andy’s 15 minutes of fame has certainly outlived him, and he’ll doubtless be even more valuable a hundred years from now, but let’s compare Moby and Bach. Is their art really different? Both are mass produced and mass marketed, though there may be more marketing of Moby. The differences seem quite small to me, but I doubt there will be cheap busts of Moby on every drum machine 200 years from now.

      I’m getting a bit off subject here. Let’s get back to photographing the Mona Lisa. We’ll borrow it from the Louvre (it should be no problem since we’ll promise to take real good care of it and bring it back. We’ll even leave our photograph of it as collateral-with or without the frame, whichever the French prefer, though I’m sure they’d really rather have Jerry Lewis, which raises a whole other set of questions about what art is really is, iconography, and whether the French have a sense of humor. In any case, we’ll leave both. In all seriousness, when I was 9 I thought Jerry Lewis was hysterical. When I was 20 I thought he was abominable. When I was 30 I still didn’t think he was that funny, but I saw there was something deeper going on, so maybe the French aren’t that crazy after all).

      Okay, we’ve got the Mona Lisa in the trunk or our car and we take it places with our camera. We take it to a suburb and take a picture of it with a cinder block movie theater in the background. We take it to an old iron bridge and photograph it there. (Hey, bridges are about connections, powerful iconographic stuff here). We take it to a cracked parking lot the weeds are starting to reclaim and photograph it there. Are we artists yet? My answer is possibly (though probably not), and if we’ve relied solely on our powerful icons I’d say no. It’s the prayer that makes the icon holy, not the icon itself. So in short, my problem is that the orthodox see the icons and believe they, the objects, are holy unto themselves. See why God gets mad at golden calves? (I think I’ve just compared myself to God here, but I’m hoping I’ve compared you to God too, so maybe you won’t think my ego that titanic.)

      So, I’ve defined (and criticized) these icon photographs. Does this mean they’re all bad? No, the plain truth is some of them are pretty good, and I don’t want to condemn the entire style. I only criticize artists who use iconography as a crutch, and I encourage anyone mesmerized by the nude, or confronted by the vacant eyed teen, to look a little deeper, beyond the facade to see if there’s anything really there. If there is, it’s art. If there isn’t, it’s propaganda.

Barry Massoni
August, 2002 (C.)