The ubiquity of the image

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.

Dancing around my head I have Gramsci’s quote from Romain Rolland, which may well sum up the tone of our latest comments: ‘Pessimism of the intelligence, optimism of the will.’ Perhaps we could end this line of discourse here, then, and set off in new directions.

Note how terms like ‘illiteracy’, ‘education’, ‘training’, ‘schooling’ and ‘students’ have run through various interventions. This brings us to a key issue, which is that of teaching and raising awareness. All three of us have been more or less intensively involved in teaching and popularizing. This being so, two points. First, it is not enough to criticize the present state of image culture: we also need to be critical of ourselves, because we are to some extent active agents of this culture and thus responsible for the current situation. We can analyse what portion of the blame we ought to bear -probably not much, given the mesh of powers and circumstances- but I don’t think it is intellectually acceptable to present ourselves as mere outsiders, as aloof external observers. Second, we ought to turn the argument round: we are in a privileged position to intervene in the state of affairs, or at least in its future, because one of our duties is precisely to help shape the spirit of photographers and publics - that is to say, both the producers of images and the consumers of images.

Traditionally, educational methodologies have been structured differently depending on whom they set out to address. It seemed logical to do this, not only because the conceptual mechanisms of writing or reading were different, but because an active attitude was expected of some and an essentially passive attitude of others. This is no longer the case, but I nevertheless have the impression that the programmes pursued by schools and exhibitions, specialists publications and canonical criticism continue to insist on the routine of that obsolete dichotomy. Nowadays we are all producers and consumers at the same time, and the lack of differentiation of these roles calls for a radically new educational agenda.

A brief article by Alasdair Foster, director of the ACP (Australian Centre for Photography) in Sydney, puts this forward very graphically (http://www.zonezero.com/editorial/editorial.html). Foster compares the reforms currently taking place in the world of the image with the Protestant Reformation that shook Christianity in the 16th century. In the Catholic Church the ministry of the faith is the preserve of an oligarchy of ‘professionals’ (members of the clergy, the priestly class); in contrast, Luther and his followers set out to ‘deprofessionalize’ the ministry, liberalizing the interpretation of the holy scriptures according to personal conscience. A Protestant pastor may be an expert, but his or her knowledge is meant to be at the service of the community without exercising exclusive authority over it, so that a lay person can also deliver a sermon to the congregation. In the world of art, of photography and visual communication in general this is also happening. The hierarchical separation between professionals and public is tending to diminish, even disappear altogether, with the result that their positions are becoming interchangeable. The image is ubiquitous today because we all make or deal with photographs, we all generate and receive graphic information, irrespective of the meaning that we invest it with. How, then, do we address this new reality in terms of a coherent pedagogy?