The ubiquity of the image

Like Radu, one of our bloggers who identifies himself as Juan sent us a post on March 25 in which he mentioned Moholy-Nagy’s famous remark about the illiterates of the future being those who are ignorant of photography. Juan also cited Zygmunt Bauman’s ‘liquid society’, the ‘risk society’ of Ulrich Beck, the society of ‘new capitalism’ of Richard Sennett, Gilles Lipovetsky’s ‘Kleenex society’, Nicholas Negroponte’s ‘digital world’, the ‘network society’ of Manuel Castells… We could also add the ‘fiction capitalism’ put forward by Vicente Verdú, in which images, as generators of fiction, are the most prized commodities. To this schema I would add that the first step in a pedagogy of photography was to teach people to ‘write’ it; the second step was to teach them to ‘read’ it. This phase is not yet over ; in other words, we find ourselves in that future full of illiterates foretold by Moholy-Nagy but with the added aggravation of a new circumstance: what gives meaning to images today is their proliferation and circulation: that is, precisely the new scenario of communication we are discussing here. It is no longer enough to know how to decode a photograph in terms of its historical, aesthetic, semiotic and even ideological parameters: nowadays it is the economic and political uses of the image that prevail.

At the time of writing these lines I am driving across the Sonora Desert in Arizona. Unfortunately, I’m making the trip not for pleasure but for professional reasons, to take part in a series of activities at universities in Phoenix and Tucson, including workshops with students from graduate photography programmes. Incidentally, as I travel between the two cities I’m enjoying landscapes with iconic resonances and my head is filled with déjà-vus of many sequences from classic westerns like many of the photographers who, like Timothy O’Sullivan, explored the American West. So I am reliving at first hand the contemporary phenomenon of the image preceding the experience, illustrating what we have been talking about here. Well, I met bright students with competent teachers and enviable facilities, who could boast of work that was impeccable in its technical and plastic handling, some of it even conceptually powerful, often with timid programmatic or ethical justifications; as a rule, however, they were incapable of explaining why they had made those images, what effects they hoped to provoke, what strategies of dissemination they had conceived… They simply made images, full stop. Creativity and intellectual effort were concentrated in the images, but in images completely isolated from the world and its engagements, as if an image ought not have a life of its own outside of the art school art, or to put it more painfully, as if images were destined to be mere exercises in style. But what style? Well, that of the most total blindness. Because, as we have been insisting, nowadays the significant background to the creative work is all about the problems of circulation, the trajectory that is traced between artist and public in -I repeat-economic and political contexts in which artist and public are reduced to mere extras. If the students -that is to say, the future professionals- of the image are left ignorant these factors, we are lost. But be careful: this does not imply neglecting the actions that need to be carried out with regard to the general public.

I am delighted, though, that in the wake of our diagnostics have come proposals for action such as Christian’s. We need to extend Moholy-Nagy’s words and say that the illiterates of the future will be those who are left on the fringes of computers and the Internet. When I speak of the trajectory between producers and consumers, computers and the Internet are the heart and soul of any option that within a certain margin of freedom and operability would aim at raising awareness and arousing collective reactions. Over and above attitudes and intentions, computers and the Internet are the main tools with which to respond to the political and media Establishment. It is essential to make a real effort, then, to learn to use them effectively.

I entirely agree with Joan. Including our responsibilities, which I absolutely accept, in our failure, after thirty years, to manage to establish a pedagogy of the image from the first years of schooling on. I ought to add that while I love teaching, and my -privileged- students are stimulating, exceptional, dynamic, I sometimes have doubts: what is the underlying significance of an education that trains photographers at a time when there are too many professional photographers and where everyone is producing and circulating images? Certainly to give them access to tools for understanding the history of the image and help them understand the need for critical thought in the process of developing their projects. And it works not too badly, even if they are a very small minority.

It’s quite clear that at a time when the funds allocated to culture and education are everywhere in significant decline, when financial flows -which direct the flow of images- are concentrating more and more on communication, consumption and entertainment the answer is not simple and guerrilla warfare is difficult to structure.

The earlier proposal regarding the public space might be an element, but it needs to be more complex, enriched by a genuinely educational action.

This is not really entryism -sorry, Radu- but I think we should be trying to enhance our ability to use the tool, the tools of ‘the enemy’. As someone who has tried for years to convince television channels of the editorial uses of photography, and has put on programmes (very minority: ARTE) that dealt with the image, I am well aware that we -definitely a minority- are marked by the Sisyphus syndrome…

Even so -and this proves that I’m still optimistic- I wonder if we couldn’t manage to invent, on the Internet, a site dedicated to the teaching of the image, with links to other sites we think are interesting, as a tool for teachers, a place of knowledge -however superficial- for the young. I think it can be conceived as something both serious and fun. One way of treating the Web as a counter-power…

Perhaps it’s because the light is coming back with the promise of spring.

‘The People have the power’ -  Patti Smith

I have no conflict with the positions put forward by Joan and Radu, or with Joan invoking the line that runs through Gramsci and all that has been most intelligent, open and innovative -and freest- in the thinking of European communism. It’s more to my way of thinking, even if I am aware of the limits, than the reference to Trotskyite entryism, which I have opposed for thirty years… She who ‘enters’ never wins, I’m afraid.

It’s simply that I think that we have been both accomplices and willing victims of the system. We wanted to take a stand against the dominant ideologies which manifested themselves in pictures. We have done this by creating alternative images (Joan), by writing and editing (me), by teaching in a radical way and theorizing (Radu). We have been at the same time players, accomplices, critics and mainsprings of all these movements that have shaken up an image that no longer knew where it was. We have our responsibilities -our irresponsibilities, too- but I don’t believe that we are the worst… I still defend the right to entertain illusions and make mistakes.

Given that we agree on the need for actions that will affect the greatest number, I hope there will be a place online for my provocation -just a small provocation…- about the need to take the public space into account. To twist it, to pervert it, perhaps.

The need for pedagogy, about which all three of us are in agreement, reminds me of a sad experience. In 1982, when Jack Lang was Minister of Culture in France, about ten of us had a lot of meetings to develop what we called ‘a policy of image learning in school.’ The result was dossiers, report -no doubt buried away in drawers- and the ephemeral and since questioned creation of specialized ‘visual arts’ syllabuses. A way of negating the need for youngsters to become familiar with history of images.

Above and beyond the outrageous proposal for the presence of the image, with no function other than its presence, in the public space, I wonder if we might not be capable of inventing a method of teaching on the Internet.