The contemporary world is dominated by the presence of the photograph. Its power to displace perspectives of the external world is now equivalent to the spontaneous act of seeing. This is translated into formalist theory when the thing photographed is less important than the photograph itself. The status of the photograph has reached the position whereby the world is now compared to it. STRUCTURAL(ISM) & PHOTOGRAPHY explores aspects of a photographic model inasmuch as the meaning of the external world has already been appropriated by the disseminating power of photography.
The "recording of phenomena purely by means of the effects of phenomena" defines photography as something which communicates itself--reproductions of reproductions--a transparent mode of production that generates an endless chain of signs. Here, images of identity and diversion are registered in sets of complimentary frames. The inside of the frame forms a target of content drawing attention to images of names, ideas and issues that turn the patterns of discourse into an exclusive index for those who manage the system. The accrued myth is two-fold: the utterance of the image and the multiplying of the object enshroud the system with an "aura of legitimacy" equal to nature.
During the production of PHOTOGRAPHY & LANGUAGE in 1976, the mythologizing function of a format was made apparent to me while compiling the bibliography for the book. Inside the folded space of a book, the bibliography passes uncriticized due to its ostensible purpose as a supplementary source of references. The page on which the bibliography is printed evokes neither shadow nor ambience because of the shallow depth of its construction. The strictness of order is justified by an alphabetical composition. One reads the stacking of authors in columns of type as a disembodied library; the effect of the design produces a neatly closed structure. However, in it, the restrictive act of authorization, of naming, is automatically sent and received in states of mind resembling the mode of production.
In order to neutralize a system of impositions, and the technique of naming that establishes the monopoly of art and photographic interests, strategies were incorporated into independent publications to renegotiate the space of ideas without a formal or permanent address (NFS PRESS, P.O. BOX). Issues were examined, reordered, and then put on the move in a series of titles disenfranchising the image of context. The white simplicity of the gallery or the pages of a gallery catalog were cancelled-out by a network of theory that has proven to be manifestly more real than the aesthetic furniture found in the fixed space. PHOTOGRAPHY & LANGUAGE, EROS & PHOTOGRAPHY and STRUCTURAL(ISM) & PHOTOGRAPHY are some of the titles that were sent out. The books were conceived and designed by Donna-Lee Phillips and myself to fulfill a multiplicity of functions. The format of the publications serves to illustrate a theory of photography that is intrinsically supported by the typographical presence of the text; and the format has had to act simultaneously as periodical, catalog, anthology, reference, history and text book. STRUCTURAL(ISM) & PHOTOGRAPHY closes for me the reliable and useful 9" x 12" vertical shape of the book.
The contents of STRUCTURAL(ISM) & PHOTOGRAPHY are divided into classifications of objects (or photographic pieces), installations, collaborative projects, writings and reproductions of reproductions. The work in the book is fundamental and mostly relies on the conventions of photography, the plus or minus of arithmetic, and the letters of the alphabet to formulate structures for the presentation of the pieces and projects.
It is so fundamental that I can construct an analogy identifying my activities as a photographer with the changes I have observed in my daughter, Kesa, since her birth in 1971. The photographic pieces are comparable to toys from which I have discovered simple patterns that allow me access to the world of photography and images. When the techniques for grasping the objects were learned, I attempted to mobilize the discernible ideas by adapting them to the space outside the security of the studio. The resulting installations or games entailed activities that I could sustain independently by reducing the objects to a portable set of materials. Whether the space was inside the studio, or even outside the gallery, I was forced to admit that there was another space that could be termed a context of relationships. The knowledge derived from these activities and associations made the limitations of the context clear to me insofar as space itself is a condition of thinking. From these experiences I was able to understand that the photographic pieces, the installations, collaborative projects, the context and the theory were not separate and divisible entities. Although the particular activities and products had had to undergo objectification, they were nevertheless a composite search for an order that is accessible and lived.
The book you are looking at is not contingent on the tradition of photography. When the material is derived from other photographs, it is from photographic reproductions of modern art, especially the art of Picasso, where "the act of painting new ensembles borrowed not from the reality of vision but from the reality of conception," as Cubism was described by Guillaume Apollinaire in 1912. However, two notable exceptions to this view of photography are the influences of the professional photographer Joe Schopplein and the master photographer John Gutmann.
The professional photography of Joe Schopplein has always provided me with a durable standard for measuring the clarity and effectiveness of photographs whose assistance and resources made this book and the work presented in it possible, The work of John Gutmann is simply one of photographic mastery. The image of the Bibliography box with its black and white typography that begins the interior of this book is respectfully put there in association with Gutmann's photograph, "Automobile Covered with Political Slogans, 1938," that opens the publication, PHOTOGRAPHY & LANGUAGE.
STRUCTURAL(ISM) & PHOTOGRAPHY manipulates the genre of the retrospective catalog by looping the chronological chain of the book with captions, letters, theory and images articulating the present state of the work. Though the status of the part is meant to govern the whole, each of the parts are themselves whole and reflect at anytime in the book the sheer meaning of the entire structure. The methodical practices expressed in the work allow me to dispense with compositional devices predicated on personal choices and taste. The less I have to do with the aesthetics of composition the more likely it will a suitable structure appear for the release of visible information. The spacing of the units into an organizational structure is derivative of Mallarme's theory of Espacement where the words on a page are themselves surrounded by a system of blank white spaces actively denoting a constructive memory.
In 1973, I visited the studio of a friend, the painter, Masashi Matsumoto, where I saw a number of hand-lettered signs tacked on the wall. The messages written to himself included memos, aphorisms, and maxims. The signs were carefully painted in combinations of vivid colors, producing the effect of autonomous objects. They appeared to evoke fragments of a personal text. The association with Masashi Matsumoto has enabled me to see the value of telephone conversations or letters as potential subject matter for my photography. STRUCTURAL(ISM) & PHOTOGRAPHY is intrinsically dependent on files of correspondence. This documentation, although a function of language, is assignable to the activities of photography. Whether the documentary is an objective or provisional form of information, it can nevertheless exist privately as an agent of memory and imagery.
It is incorrect to view STRUCTURAL(ISM) & PHOTOGRAPHY as simply an effort to regulate facts or to systematize data. The work is ineluctably ideal. Its objectives revolve around a dialectic of criticism and synthesis where the problem of perspectives, experience, information and production is traceable to the graphic order of language and a system of reproductions of reproductions. It is here that the "still" photograph is meant to operate as an element of intelligibility. It is here that the photographic model represents the bricolage of elements controlling the appearance of meaning. The work of Peter D'Agostino demonstrates for me the concreteness of this kind of photographic model. The observational projects set-up by D'Agostino identify the problems of "coming and going" (influence and direction) with graphic sensations derived from the topography of film and language.
It may be at this point that there arises the need to 'negate the negation'. And this may take the form of feeling that, after all, I am the 'one' who creates the world. That part of it, at least. that lives and dies with me. In this sense, the world is my invention, as I am myself: my own invention. Somehow though the sense of responsibility is divided--and we set on opposing courses what comes from 'out there', and what belongs 'in here'. (Lawrence Fixel, GLIMMERS Three: Mining Shadows, April 18, 1977.)
An example of facing the conflict of responsibility is THE NEW COMMERCIALIST (A Review), edited and published by Meyer Hirsch. In it the fetish of publication is reduced to the image of typewritten texts in order to provide a structure for ideas and beliefs that are rejected as awkward by those who control the systems of reproductions. THE NEW COMMERCIALIST is an accessible model that effectively contradicts the standards of publications even like the kind you are now reading.
I view the material of STRUCTURAL(ISM) & PHOTOGRAPHY more like an intellectual observer of the sustaining ideas than from a position that demands special gifts. For the work I am presenting, which I insist is photographic, could have been done by a blind person.
