It’s a digital moment

which I presented framed old family photographs mixed with photos of skin marks, such as scars or daily skin marks caused by the pressure of objects. I didn’t know exactly why was I doing it, but I knew that I wanted to represent evidence in a way; I wanted to show that those things indeed happened and there was a proof of it. I was always interested in old photographs, especially when I didn’t know who was in the photo. It is a mixture of curiosity and an odd excitement about people’s privacy.

Sometimes I go to Camden antique’s market to buy old family photographs, acquired in house clearances, and somehow every time I look at the images I feel like I have known those people, or have been to those places. These photographs have an aura that brings this kind of feeling on.

After presenting the Foundation project, noticing my great interest for old photographs, my tutor told me to read Camera Lucida, from Roland Barthes. I bought the book, but I did not understand what Barthes wanted to say, so I gave up on reading it at that time and put it in the shelf. There the book stayed until I started this new project. I decided to give it another try; I knew that there was something in Camera Lucida that would let me understand my curiosity for old photographs.

Three years ago, when I was doing the Foundation course, I started a project in

In the first half of the book, Barthes describes the differences between studium - the obvious symbolic meaning of a photograph - and punctum - an unexpected emotional response when seeing a photograph; each person will have a different response. He says that the punctum is a detail, sometimes tiny, that fills the whole picture. In the second half of the book, he describes the new punctum, which is the perception of time; when he sees a picture he thinks “that is dead, and that is going to die”.

I realized that the punctum was what my Foundation tutor wanted me to comprehend.

In relation to old family photographs, I believe that the concept of new punctum involves not only the notion of “that-has-been”, but it is also imbedded with an aura that radiates from those images. According to Walter Benjamin, the unique existence of a piece - a work of art, in his case - results from the changes it may have suffered in physical condition over the years as well as the various changes in its ownership. He says that the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity is the presence of the original, and the uniqueness of the original is its aura.

At the limit, there is no need to represent a body in order for me to experience this vertigo of time defeated. (Barthes, 1980).

Benjamin’s notion of aura is related to the old family photo albums because of their authenticity. The dirt of the images, or the notes found behind them mentioning names or dates, affirms their uniqueness, it shows that it has history and it belonged to someone else.

In one of my visits to Camden market I’ve found a family album with photographs from the 1940’s. What caught my attention in this album were some pictures taken in a family trip to Egypt, where I was with my family a couple of months before the visit to the antique stall.

What impressed me the most in this trip was a visit to a temple called Abu Simbel. A spectacular and imposing monument built between 1244 BC and 1224 BC, it is a temple to the greatness of Ramesses II. It consists of two constructions, The Temple of Ramesses and the Temple of Nefertari, who was his favorite wife.

I was not only amazed by the grandiosity of that ancient construction, but also by the history behind it. Lost once

The authenticity of a thing is the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced. (Benjamin, 1955).

to the sands of the desert, Abu Simbel was almost lost for a second time when the construction of the Aswan High Dam threatened to submerge the site under the waters of Lake Nasser. The Egyptian government along with UNESCO and a team of engineers, scientists and archaeologists worked for four years to relocate the monument 200 feet from the original site. The relocation started in 1964.

Flipping through the old family album I found the photos of the Abu Simbel temple in its original site, in the 1940’s. For me, to find the photos of something that does not exist in that place anymore was very exiting; it was punctum. At the same time I really wanted to buy the album, but was also terrified of having a photo album of unknown dead people in my house. It once belonged to a family, and surely they wouldn’t want their album to be held by a stranger.

According to Susan Sontag, the earliest popular use of photography was to memorialize the achievements of the members of a family or other groups. The family photograph is used as a rite of passage; the photo album is about the extended family and gives people an idea that they own an unreal past.

Sontag says that family photographs are a way to prove that something happened and are to be shown as trophies of their achievements or trips, for example.

Going back to the Foundation project, it somehow illustrated Sontag’s critique about family photographs and how they serve as evidences that something happened; in my project the evidences were skin marks compared with family photographs, which was another kind of evidence of a fact.

The concept for this new project ‘It’s a digital moment’ is to exemplify the ideas of Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin and Susan Sontag combined with my thoughts on punctum, aura and evidence. The idea is to illustrate the three theories by digitally making visual experiments for each of them.

Like every mass art form, photography is not practiced by most people as an art. It is mainly a social rite, a defense against anxiety, and a tool of power (Sontag, 1977)

Photographs will offer indisputable evidence that the trip was made, that the program was carried out, that fun was had (Sontag, 1977)

Experiment I - punctumFor this experiment I will represent one of my interpretations of new punctum, which is nostalgia. Although Barthes defines the new punctum as death, for me is much more about longing for the past revealed in an image, combined with being aware that “that is dead”, that is over and it is not coming back. I will explore the history of buildings that are today abandoned. For that I will compare old images of the building from the period when they were occupied for it’s initial purpose, with images of these buildings when they were emptied or turned into something else.

Spillers Millenium Mills 1934 - construction1981 - closure

left / taken by Renata Westenberger / 2009right x2 / http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Spillers / 1934

left x2 / http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=67116 / 2011right / http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Spillers / 1934

left / taken by Renata Westenberger / 2009right x2 / http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Spillers / 1934

Lots road power station 1905 - construction2002 - closure

left / http://www.20thcenturylondon.org.uk / 1997right / http://www.engrailhistory.info/r006.html / 1905

left / taken by Renata Westenberger / 2009right x2 / http://www.20thcenturylondon.org.uk / 1926

left x2 / http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=41883 / 2009right x2 / http://www.engrailhistory.info/r006.html / 1905

left x2 / taken by Renata Westenberger / 2009right x2 top / http://www.20thcenturylondon.org.uk / 1905right bottom / http://www.20thcenturylondon.org.uk / 1920-1935

Experiment II - auraFor this experiment I will digitally reproduce old photographs bought in Camden’s antique market, as an attempt to attest Walter Benjamin’s idea about the lost of presence of a piece when it is mechanically reproduced. The first part of this experiment implicates in a reproduction by scanning the photographs, each image will be scanned and printed. This print will be scanned again, and then printed, and so on, until the images becomes blurry and unrecognizable. For the second part of this experiment I will photograph an old photograph acquired in the antique market using a digital camera. I will print this digital image and then I will photograph the new image, then I will print it and photograph it, and so on until the old image is unrecognizable.

Part I, Scanned images - image I

Part I, Scanned images - image II

Part I, Scanned images - image III

Part I, Scanned images - image IV

Part II, Photographed images

Experiment III - evidenceFor this experiment I will revisit my Foundation project, done in 2008, in which I simulated a family’s collection of framed pictures of themselves. However, I presented the family’s images mixed with images of skin marks which someway illustrated Sontag’s critique about family photographs and how they are evidences that something happened; in my project the evidences were skin marks compared with family photographs, which was another kind of evidence of a fact.

The family’s collection

All photographs taken by Renata Westenberger / 2008/09

Conclusion

my objective was to describe in a didactic approach each of these theories.

In relation to the brief, which was to make a critical contribution to the debate around the shift from analogue to digital photography, I analysed the uniqueness of an old photograph, and how it loses its presence, or its aura, when it is mechanically reproduced.

This brief helped me understand the reasons why I chose to do certain projects in the past four years; before doing this brief I had thought that I exploited random choices for some of my previous projects, but after “It’s a digital moment” I could contextualize many of them, based on theorists and philosophers’ ideas.

I conclude that by making the experiments on punctum, aura and evidence,

Bibliography

Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida. London: Vintage, 2000.

Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. London: Pimlico, 1999

Sontag, Susan. On Photography. London: Penguin Group, 2008

Concept and design by Renata Westenberger

http://itsadigitalmoment.blogspot.co.uk/