A practice – based research about the hidden performative dimensions of the photographic process.
KEYWORDS: photographer, process, somatic practices, gesture of photographing, performance, invisible, practice-based research, physical and mental challenges.
“Viewing the motion of a man with his camera (or a camera with its man), we are looking at the movements of hunting…While hunting, the photographer moves from one space-time category to another, and he combines the various space-and-time categories while on the move.” (Vilém Flusser, 1983: 23).
What happens when the lenses turn towards the person behind the camera?
This practice-based research seeks to investigate and explore from within the photographic process, revealing its hidden and invisible performative dimension as a site specific event. I look at photography as somatic practitioner with a background in dance/improvisation/performance and with a specific interest in the creative process of making art. According to Susan Sontag: …picture taking is an event in itself…while real people are there out killing themselves or other real people, the photographers stay behind his or her camera, creating a tiny element of another world (Susan Sontag, 1979: 11 ). But what are exactly those tiny elements that the photographer creates and what do they reveal about the gesture of photographing?
We are used to speaking about Photography and/or Photographs, having little discourse and interest on the persona “behind the scenes”, the photographer and his/her creative process. Therefore my main concern is to explore what remains invisible in photographer’s process. Specifically, this research starts from the position that taking photographs can be seen as a performance already in the moment of its happening; a site specific performance that occurs either indoors or outdoors. By taking a closer look to the photographic process, the aim is to create a new archetype figure of a photographer whose perspective, points of view and embodiment are challenged to reveal the hidden aspects of an event, able to communicate beyond the photograph itself.
The (in)visible photographer becomes the target of investigation, exploration, tracing and mapping while s/he prepares, moves in the space, interacts with the subject(s), gives directions, manipulates the camera, decides and clicks. The focus is the postures, stances, micro gestures and physical movements the photographer performs whilst working on his/her practice. The various tools and equipment that s/he uses and how s/he relates to them. Photographer, as performer, moves in a space where s/he interacts with other people and objects. The photographer emerges as someone “… in perpetual movement, someone moving through a panorama of disparate events with such agility and speed that any intervention is out of the question.” (Sontag, 1979)
In this practice-based research, I as performer and researcher step to the other side and rather than being observed, looked at or captured by the photographer – observe, look, capture and recompose the photographer’s process in such a way that the intersection points of performance and photography – which often have been seen as two opposite practices – get blurred.
This is intentionally a practice using cross-disciplinary approaches and involves the creation of new audio visual work based on the findings/material of the research.
The broad subject of the proposed programme of research regards photography as practice in collaboration with professional photographers, site-specific performance and performance art documentation. I will be also looking to different somatic practices in order to investigate and explore the physicality involved in the photographic process and how the photographer’s body can be challenged.
Aims and objectives:
While there is a broad theoretical understanding on the medium of photography, cultural debates around the status of the photographic image in the 21st century, analysis of the different ways to look at photography and photographs, there is very little concerned with the photographic process. Therefore this practice based-research aims to undertake an original investigation and to explore how the hidden and/or invisible performative elements of photography can be revealed and be used in order to redefine the importance of the process as creative practice in the field of photography. In this way, a new archetype can emerge that blurs the confines of photography and performance.
The main objectives are a) to establish a way to trace, map and define the movement patterns of the photographer during his/her process and b) to demonstrate the new knowledge through creative outcomes in the form of an audiovisual exhibition around the “(In)visible Photographer”.
Research questions which will be addressed.
Through this exploratory process I seek different answers to my main research question:
-How can we reveal that taking photographs is a performance already in the moment of its happening and what will change in the way we view and approach Photography as an art-form when we turn our focus on the Photographer and the actual gesture of photographing? What happens when we bring within the practice physical and mental challenges?
-What kind of figure/archetype emerges through challenging the photographing process by integrating performance practice within it?
Sub/questions to be taken in consideration are:
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How and when the photographic process becomes a performative event?
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How can a body pattern or a body language be codified in relation to the photographic process?
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To what degree can the movement vocabulary (learned and generated within this research) generate a site-specific performance?
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How far the body becomes reflective mechanism for the experience of the photographer?
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How far can the gesture of photography be challenged?
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What changes in the relationship and dynamic between photographer and subject when the photographer becomes visible and conscientiously part of the event when the photographer knows that s/he is watched ?
By observing, investigating, documenting, tracing and mapping the process of the photographer, I will try to gather information and material pn:
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What kind of imprints the photographer leaves in space.
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Which are the different ways a photographer uses the body and physicality.
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What changes when photographer’s physicality/body is challenged through limitations/scores enforcing him/her to bring attention to his/her body during the photographing process?
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What changes in the aesthetics, relationship, interaction with his/her subject of work?