Barthes, two Polaroids and three hostages (part 1).
The following text was an initial - and jettesoned - draft introduction to my M(res), one of two such introductions (the other concerning the film Memento).
Barthes' use of brackets is discussed in much more depth by Peter Buse in his essay Photography Degree Zero: Cultural History Of The Polaroid Image (in: New Formations. No 62. pp.29-44. 2007) - an essay I was sadly unaware of during the time I spent on my M(res). This was not helped, of course, by the fact that this text was written before publication of Buse's essay!
Barthes, Two Polaroids and Three Hostages.
... I am not a photographer, nor even an amateur photographer: too impatient for that: I must see right away what I have produced (Polaroid? Fun, but disappointing, except when a great photographer is involved.) (p9)
1. In a mere eleven words Barthes’, acknowledging the fact that his impatience can be arrested\assuaged, simultaneously privileges and denigrates the instant Polaroid photograph. It is privileged by its location as a distinct entity within the multifarious domain of photographic practice (its properties of self-development and a corrosponding redundancy of human intervention) yet this is the privilege of recognition only. Rather, one could say the Polaroid is singled out, held to be an aberration: an eccentricity to be waved away: denigrated as an object of fun. It is an image that provides for a mere fleeting investment (the medium itself possess but a little studium!). Further, and more damming, it is proffered as an item destined to disappoint. Disappoint! Additional synonyms suggested for the word on Microsoft Word (the program I am using to set down this text) are: let down, disillusion, fail, dissatisfy, dishearten, upset, thwart, frustrate.
2. A seeking out of synonyms provides for a horizontal unpacking of a word, reveals its cultural associations, while etymology seeks to locate a word at the top of a vertical axis and then burrow down. One seeks to locate a word in a contemporary field the other seeks to discover its historical evolution.
3. Barthes’ ‘exception’ of this inherent redundancy stemming from the utilisation of the instant Polaroid, which he accords to ‘great photographer[s]’, further limits the possibilities of such photographic practice. For the assumption resting behind such an exception, such a qualification is that a photographer must be great first, by other means (technique, practice, medium, subject, inclusion) before an instant Polaroid photograph worthy of inclusion with the artistic community can be ejected. The Polaroid image is, a priori, a worthy image because a great photographer positioned himself within the field of its creation. The implication here of course is that the instrument and resulting image produced is an irrelevancy – it is the author as genius that is the prescient fact rather than the work itself. Thus, this exception is no exception, for it reinforces its antithesis. The exception is invoked to prove the rule.
4. One should also note that the sentence is positioned as a statement of fact - attested to by its confinement within brackets. It functions as an aside spoken by an actor to an audience where the assumption is that they already know what is uttered to be true.
5. A teasing out of authorial meaning in regard to the integral Polaroid photograph within a single sentence located within a book that mentions such a medium at no other time, from a book that is both a meditation on loss, and a mediation on loss as a political act, that is both a exposition of a theory of photography and the negation of the possibility of positing such a theory - and, more importantly, a
desire to specify such an impossibility – may seem a spurious entrance to embark upon a discussion of the instant Polaroid photograph - of all possible beginnings, why this one?
28 05 2009
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