Beyond the Index - reviewed
Beyond the Index
Karen Crisp, Shona Dey, Jacob Hakopa Hamilton, Christine Jeffs, Cassey Locke, Anton Maurer, Haruhiko Sameshima and Yvonne Shaw, curated by Allan McDonald
Gallery One, Unitec
28 July – 29 September, 2020
Reviewed by Andrew Clark for PhotoForum, 21 August 2020
Photography, as a medium, is fundamentally entangled with technological and social change, constantly reinventing itself in what John Szarkowski identified as its “historic and continuing search for a renewed and vital identity.”(1) When he wrote those words in 1989, digital photography was on the cusp of emerging as an option for professionals, with high-end cameras such as the Dycam Model 1 hitting the US market in 1990.(2) By the end of the decade, digital cameras were well on their way to ubiquity, and their inclusion as a standard feature in smartphones ultimately cemented digital snapshot photography’s status as the default photographic mode in contemporary society. All of this is to say that both the means and the meanings behind photography have changed markedly over the past several decades, and no doubt will change again in ways impossible to predict.
In Beyond the Index, Allan McDonald has assembled a group of works with the stated intent of exploring the tension between the subjective and the documentary, and between the analogue and the digital, in contemporary photographic practice. In his introductory text McDonald cites Sara Callahan’s characterisation of analogue photography as a mode of discourse, rather than a set of technical processes, suggesting that even digitally produced work can “evoke” or possess analogue characteristics.(3) This is a potent mix of ideas on which to base an exhibition, and on the whole the resulting set of works do indeed speak to these concepts in various ways.
Anton Maurer, Karangahape 26.03.20 - 23.05.2020
The additional factor looming over this exhibition, of course, is that of the global pandemic caused by Covid-19, and the resulting lockdowns and travel restrictions. Although not all the work on display was produced under lockdown conditions, some of it certainly was, most notably Anton Maurer’s video work Karangahape 26.03.20-23.05.20, which chronicles the impact of the initial lockdown period on Auckland’s iconic countercultural hub. Maurer documents the eponymous location during lockdown, offering eerie vistas of nearly deserted midday streets alongside slow panning shots of the interior of an apartment, the camera neatly circumscribing the confines of a locked-down existence. In addition to its value as a document of an unprecedented moment in Aotearoa’s history, this work also functions as a psychological study of the alienating, dissociative effects of lockdown and a dreamlike meditation on a posthuman environment.
Even works in the show produced prior to 2020, such as Yvonne Shaw’s Role Reversal images, take on new meanings in a post-Covid environment; her psychologically charged depiction of two women alternately seated and standing, spotlighted on a stage, inevitably evokes the magnetic repulsion and psychological severance inherent in the concept of social distancing, in which other humans become potential vectors of infection, physical hazards to be navigated around. Meanwhile, Christine Jeffs provides perhaps the most arresting work in the show, a 2015 monochrome image titled Living, in which a nude man defiantly confronts the viewer with hands on hips, his body wasted and scarred but still possessed of a powerful vitality. The title, his bald head and the surgical appliance attached to his side imply that he is perhaps undergoing treatment for cancer. In the current climate, this potent image of resilience in the face of illness takes on a new significance.
Both Haruhiko Sameshima and Jacob Hakopa Hamilton’s works in this exhibition deal with nostalgic or historical themes. Sameshima’s In Plato’s Cave consists of a black-and-white photograph of a sculpture casting a shadow against a wall, surrounded by a collection of vintage cigarette cards depicting industrial and mechanical subjects. In the accompanying exhibition catalogue, Sameshima includes an excerpt from Susan Sontag’s On Photography in which the author characterises photography as “a grammar and … an ethics of seeing.”(4) Sameshima’s work discusses the ability of photography to function semantically, organising and categorising thought and meaning, and questions whether this still holds true in a post-digital environment. Also confronting the past, Jacob Hakopa Hamilton’s work refers to the earliest days of the photographic avant-garde. Using direct exposures to create layered, intricate abstractions in black and white, he calls back to the works of formative modernists such as Man Ray while drawing parallels to digital composition techniques; in the accompanying text, Hamilton positions his work as commentary on the “contaminated perceptions and behaviours” of the digital mind-space.(5)
Cassey Locke’s photographs are crisp, uncanny icons, their saturated colour palette lending the work an eerie immediacy, reminiscent of the hyper-real realm of the smartphone screen. However, the images themselves are un-glamourous, acutely observed vignettes reminiscent of the works of Peter Peryer, their content ambiguous and somber—a discarded corn cob crawling with insects, a spiky orange fruit held in outstretched hands. Karen Crisp’s delicately executed work Building 1_Project 1.2 is a meditation on the architectural and social legacy of the Unitec campus, which was used as a psychiatric hospital until 1992. In this work, a stretch of white wall is enlivened only by an incongruously pink light switch, suggesting a confrontation between institution and individual. Photography’s ability to engage with the processes of memory and place is likewise discussed in Shona Dey’s Experiments in the Transient, Mahia Skies, which sets a chemically manipulated analogue photograph of the night sky taken in the Mahia Peninsula against a digital surface model of the same location composited from aerial drone imagery. These two images coexist in an uneasy balancing act, their complex play with the logistics of seeing asking the viewer to consider what information omnipresent digital imagery might covertly obscure.
Karen Crisp, Building 1_Project 1.2, 2020
Photography, like contemporary life, can feel akin to a terrain that constantly shifts underfoot. Despite the challenges of our current environment, McDonald has curated an exhibition that is timely and raw, offering a broad cross-section of contemporary practice with the potential to confront and engage the viewer in a discussion about what photography is and where it might be going.
Andrew Clark is a writer and editor based in Auckland. He has a background in fine arts and a PhD in English. His areas of interest include art, photography, literature, film and science fiction.
Footnotes
1. John Szarkowski, Photography Until Now (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1989), 9.
2. https://www.digitalkameramuseum.de/en/cameras/item/dycam-model-1
3. Sarah Callahan, “The Analogue: Conceptual Connotations of a Historical Medium,” in The Power of the In-Between: Intermediality as a Tool for Aesthetic Analysis and Critical Reflection, ed. Sonya Petersson, Christer Johansson et. al. (Stockholm: Stockholm University Pres, 2018), 287-319, cited in Beyond the Index, ed. Allan McDonald (Auckland: Unitec Institute of Technology, 2020), Exhibition catalogue.
4. Susan Sontag, “In Plato’s Cave,” in On Photography (New York: Delta Books, 1977), 3-24, cited in Beyond the Index, ed. Allan McDonald.
5. Beyond the Index, ed. Allan McDonald.
This review is supported by funding from Creative New Zealand.