Illusionistic Innovations

If you see the drawing as such-and-such an animal, what I expect from you will be pretty different from what I expect when you merely know what it is meant to be. (L. Wittgenstein. Philosophical Investigations. 1953, p205e)

If you merely know that a young child’s drawing is meant to be of a cat, it is probable that the drawing shares very little in common with a cat. But if you momentarily mistook a photograph or skilful drawing of a cat for an actual cat, it would be extraordinary if the picture turned out to share nothing in common with a cat.

Now a simple phenomenological inspection of any representation, either a drawing or a photo, shows us that an image possesses none of the properties of the object represented. (U. Eco. “Critique of the Image,” 1970)

For Eco, the relation between images and “real phenomena” is “wholly arbitrary”. But this is surely mistaken. Words like “cat” certainly do have a "wholly arbitrary" relation to the things they refer to. Consequently there is no question of our mistaking the word “cat” for a four-legged animal of the feline variety. But if, as Eco claims, images also share “none of the properties” of the things they represent, then how is it possible that we can very occasionally mistake what turn out to be images for the things they represent? Eco offers no explanation. I suggest that if it is true that we can sometimes mistake the properties of one thing for the wholly different properties of another thing, then it is reasonable to suppose that we must be dealing with some form of illusion.

It is important to realise here how familiarity, so to speak, takes the edge off illusion. Is the cinema a case of illusion? Well, just possibly the first man who ever saw moving pictures may have felt inclined to say that here was a case of illusion. But in fact it's pretty unlikely that even he, even momentarily, was actually taken in; and by now the whole thing is so ordinary a part of our lives that it never occurs to us even to raise the question. We might as well ask whether producing a photograph is producing an illusion—which would plainly be just silly. (J. L. Austin. “Sense and Sensibilia.” 1960, p26)

Silly as it might be to ask such a question, it wouldn't be silly to suppose that we could use a photograph to construct an illusion. Nor would it be silly in certain circumstances to momentarily mistake a life-sized photograph of a person for an actual person. So whilst familiarity may take the edge off illusion, it doesn’t eliminate the possibility of illusion and nor might it diminish the importance of the concept.

“The application of the concept of an illusion in general presupposes a concept of being wrong in the sense that were we never wrong in what we perceive, were we never to make a false judgement about what we perceive, we should not have the concept of an illusion.” (D. W. Hamlyn. Sensation and Perception. 1961, p196)

A few years earlier, Hamlyn (no relation by the way) made some similar remarks on the same subject:

There is not necessarily anything about an illusion which tells us that it is one, for if there were it would not be appropriate to say that we were ever taken in. This is not to say that it is always right to say of someone who sees something wrongly that he is taken in; for he may see it in this way despite the fact that he knows the thing in question is not like this. But in order for it to be appropriate to talk of illusions it must sometimes be the case that people are deceived.” (D. W. Hamlyn. “The Visual Field and Perception. 1957, p112)

Now if this person “knows the thing in question is not like this” then he is not seeing it “wrongly” at all. He is seeing it as anyone else with the same perceptual faculties would see it. Moreover he sees that it is illusory in some respects and he probably also knows that other people would find it illusory in the same ways. So if I say that the moon looks like a proximate flatly presented silvery circle, I am not making a perceptual claim that should be regarded as an instance of false or wrong perception. I am using a commonplace expression that will usually be readily accepted by anyone familiar with the ways in which illusory appearances are generally expressed in language.

Shared discriminatory capacities are a precondition for shared concepts of colour, taste, sound, smell, etc. Moreover, shared propensities for perceptual illusion are a precondition for shared concepts of perceptual appearances as distinct from actualities, viz. concepts of objects publicly looking thus-and-so although not being so. (Baker and Hacker. Wittgenstein: Rules, Grammar and Necessity. 2010, p.215)

One of my principal aims in exploring these issues is to show how these “concepts of perceptual appearances” are linguistic outgrowths from innovations in illusionistic representation. In other words, without these techniques, it would make no sense to say that yonder house looks small or that a glossy surface looks wet or that a static white cinema screen looks like a multi-coloured window onto a world of moving objects and people.

It may be that people without any experience of pictorial simulation would not say that the distant hills look blue, but even such innocents would probably be tricked, by being smuggled into a good planetarium, into believing that they were looking at the open night sky. (D. Brook. “How to Draw the Curtains.” 1985)

Mute Witnesses

"While photographs may not lie, liars may photograph." Lewis Hine (1909)

“Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second."” — Jean-Luc Godard

Remarks of this kind are familiar. They suggest that images—and unedited photographs in particular—stand in some special relation to truth: that they testify, bear witness, or in some sense “tell” us how things are.

It is easy enough to speak this way, but less easy to say clearly what it amounts to.

We often describe images using terms borrowed from verbal communication. We say that they “convey meaning”, that they “tell” us something, that they “refer” to, “describe” or even “explain” the world. Photographs are said to document, to testify, to lie, or to reveal the truth. In everyday use, such talk is unproblematic. But it can begin to mislead if taken too literally, as though images function in the same way as sentences.

The difficulty becomes clearer if we attend, not to how we speak about images, but to how they are actually used. A photograph of a cup does not say anything. It does not assert, deny, or qualify. It does not exhibit anything like the structure of a sentence. Yet this does not make it empty or inert. On the contrary, its effectiveness lies precisely in the fact that it does not need to be read in this way. One simply sees what it is of. This recognition is typically immediate. No decoding is required, no translation into words. The question of what an image is about may be open, and often contested, but the question of what it is of is usually resolved without effort. Only after this does the further question—what it is about—begin to arise, and that question is rarely straightforward. We readily distinguish between uncertainty at these two levels. An ambiguous image may prompt disagreement about what it is of, but once that is settled, differences in interpretation do not ordinarily cast it back into doubt. What it shows remains stable, even where what it is taken to mean does not. This difference is important because if it made no difference what an image was of, then it could be replaced without loss by a description. In most cases, it cannot.

Part of what makes this possible is the use of illusionistic effects, with perspectival distortion as a particularly clear example. Images are made so that, under suitable conditions, they resemble what they depict closely enough for recognition to occur directly. Lines, tones, perspective, shading, focus—these are not arbitrary devices, but ways of exploiting regularities in how we see. A drawing can suggest depth; a photograph can stand in for what it shows, not completely, and not without remainder, but sufficiently for it to be taken, in certain respects, for the thing itself.

It is important to note that photographs are not, for the most part, illusions in any strong sense. We do not generally mistake them for the things they depict. But they employ illusionistic means, and under particular conditions—distance, blur, scale, lighting—they can produce effects that approach indistinguishability. The possibility of illusion is built into their operation, even where it is not realised.

Words do not work in this way. Words do not resemble the things they are about. Their use depends upon learned conventions, upon the ability to follow rules and to participate in practices of predication. Images make use of quite different capacities. They engage perception directly, relying not on symbolic substitution, but on visible similarities. For this reason, it is not obvious that images should be treated as bearers of truth or falsehood in the same way as sentences. A statement can be true or false because it asserts something about how things are. An image may depict something that did not occur, or present things in a misleading way, but it does not itself make an assertion. It shows, and what is shown can then be taken up in various ways. This is not to deny that images can be used in acts of deception, or that they can mislead. But the source of that deception lies in how images are used, combined, or interpreted—not in the image taken in isolation. Just as a gesture can be misleading without being a lie, so an image can mislead without asserting anything at all.

Two questions are often asked of an image: what is it of? and what is it about? The first is more basic. Without some answer to it, the second cannot get started. The temptation to reverse this order—to treat images primarily as vehicles of meaning—is understandable, but it risks obscuring the conditions under which they function.

This is perhaps most evident in theoretical discussions, where images are frequently assimilated to models drawn from language. They are described as signs, as messages, as objects to be decoded. Such frameworks can be useful, but they can also encourage the thought that images depend fundamentally on processes of interpretation, in the sense in which words do. What recedes in this picture is the extent to which images rely upon ordinary perceptual capacities—on the ability to recognise, to discriminate, and to respond to visual similarities. These capacities do not depend on linguistic competence, although they can be extended and organised by it.

In this respect, images might better be understood as things used in acts of showing. They make aspects of the world available in a way that can be shared. What follows from that—what they mean, how they are interpreted, what role they play—depends upon the practices in which they are embedded or inserted.

The appeal to truth, then, may be less fundamental than it appears. When we say that an image shows the truth, we are not attributing truth to the image itself so much as situating it within a wider context of use. A photograph may serve as evidence; it may support or undermine a claim. But the truth does not reside in the image as such. To recognise this is not to diminish the importance of images, but to clarify it. Their force lies not in their ability to state or to assert, but in their capacity to present—to place something before us in a way that can be taken up, examined, and discussed.

It is in that taking up, rather than in the image itself, that questions of truth and falsity arise.

Photographic Absence: a fuss about nothing

'There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.' ― John Cage

Philosopher Mikael Pettersson, explores the causal status of shadows and absences in photography. Despite the apparent absurdity of the issues he raises, the implications are profound.

For a conference presentation at the Institute For Advanced Study at Durham University, Pettersson began by reference to the widely held view that photography is a prototypical causal medium wholly dependent upon the known regularities of the universe for its efficacy. If it so happened that photography were an unreliable medium, if every exposure were a struggle with uncertainty and every image were a tapestry of the indeterminate, there would be little value in these objects that so conveniently find their way into our lives. Indeed, if photography lacked causality, it seems unlikely that vision itself would be possible.

But if photography is a causal medium, Pettersson asks, how can non-entities like shadows and other kinds of absence commonly depicted in photographs have causal influence and, moreover, what is their causal foundation?

It is tempting at this stage to throw our hands in the air and to declare the preposterousness of the enquiry. Absences, and this necessarily includes the complete absence of illumination, lack causal influence because there is literally nothing to do any causing. The box of photographic paper that sits on my desk, awaiting exposure to light, gains it's value by virtue of its complete and unalterable insensitivity to the absence of light. We discern shadows in images due to the causal presence of light and its varying intensities precisely because the absence of light has no influence whatsoever. Photographic traces that depict shadows are the result of electrochemical processes designed to replace unexposed portions of the image with chemicals that absorb light, thus simulating darkness.

But to pursue this line of response to Pettersson's enquiries would be to overlook one of the most important enigmas of human, and to an indeterminate degree also creaturely, concern. Possibly the most profound event in any life is the encounter with the death of another. Absences cause—or at least seem to cause—some of the most intense experiences we are ever likely to face. So the question over the possible causal influence of absence is by no means a trivial one. It is arguably the most significant question of all.

Another conference delegate, Vivian Mizrahi, questioned Pettersson's emphasis on photography. Why, she asked, does the same not apply to other forms of image making? For Pettersson, the widely accepted causal directness of photography, the fact that it is not mediated by the brain—as is the case with drawing or painting, seems to provide stronger grounds for attributing a causal role to absence rather than any mind-dependent intermediary. Nonetheless, minds do play an inescapable role in the reception and interpretation (or 'seeing-in') of images. This was the concluding point to which Pettersson turned his attention, though not without giving due consideration to several of the more plausible but ultimately unsatisfactory acausal theories of influence in absentia.

Is there any evidence of the causal influence of absence? It might be argued that the absence of food in our stomachs causes us to seek sustenance; or that a lack of time causes lateness; or that a hole on a beach causes sand to infill the void; or that the absence of aerodynamic lift causes an airplane to fall from the sky. All of these instances, and many more that we could enumerate, are seemingly plausible examples of the causal influence of absence. However, on inspection, many turn out to be cases of commonplace causality. A decrease in blood glucose, triggers hunger; lateness is caused by an over abundance of things to be done and falling is caused by the release of potential energy. 

However, the last example mentioned above is far from clear-cut. Some theorists would claim that the release of potential energy is due to an absence of physical support. There seems to be growing theoretical uncertainty over whether such instances are the result of an oversimplification in description or whether there genuinely are cases of negative causation. Personally, I'm not sure - though I suspect that the fault is linguistic in origin. If exhaustive detail were necessary to describe the causal history of even the most basic state of affairs, the chain of causes would lead inexorably to the Big Bang. Abstraction in description is therefore both necessary and inevitable. At some point even the most exhaustive account falls silent. The concept of absence then, like the concept of zero, is a tool that has proven to have enormous efficacy for us. Yet unlike the concept of zero, which is only ever acquired through education, there is evidence to suggest that human infants display an awareness of absence from a very early age and many animals also behave in ways that suggest a capacity to register absence.

Do these glimmerings constitute the rudimentary evidence of conceptual capacities, of proto-linguistic thought? Perhaps, but we should be wary. If we wish to provide a coherent causal theory of absence we will first need to explain the causal relations that lead to attributions of absence.

I have written previously of another philosopher, Anya Farennikova, who takes the view that we literally perceive absence. Farennikova contends that we possess mental states in which absences are represented. There is a serious problem with this theory though, and it is a difficulty reflected in the issues Pettersson brings to light. To assume that an inner representation represents absence requires this absence to have causal influence, thus violating the laws of causality.

The alternative is to view absence not as a causal entity of any kind but as the name we give to the common mismatch we find between what we expect and what we actually perceive. So, when we say that an infant or animal exhibits awareness of absence, what we really mean is that they are capable of forming expectations and of being surprised when these  do not apply.

Absence is an enormously powerful and convenient concept, but the fact that we can treat such abstractions as concrete entities is no cause to invoke causality where none is possible. As far as images go, even the most explicit absence can only be recognised as such if we are capable of a contrasting expectation: of describing, delineating or selecting a substitute of that which is absent, of the actual presence envisaged.

Or, as Carl Sagan said (admittedly in a completely different context): "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

Signification and Sensibility: Notes on the Photographic Index

Is smoke a representation of the fire that produces it? Do shadows represent the things that cast them. Do the rings of a tree represent its age? Is the inverted view seen in a dewdrop a representation? Is a footprint? Or an echo?

For Charles Sanders Peirce (1839 – 1914) each of the above would constitute what he defined as “Indices.” For Peirce "An Index [singular] is a sign which refers to the Object that it denotes by virtue of being really affected by that Object.” Indices “represent their objects independently of any resemblance to them, only by virtue of real connections with them.”

This notion of a causal connection between the index and its object has often been thought to confer a special status upon indexical signs, and amongst such signs none has figured more prominently, or generated more discussion, than that of the photograph. Photographs are the result of electrochemical changes manifested in a photosensitive surface in response to exposure to light, and this causal relationship is believed to contribute to, or constitute even, the unique - and some would say “objective” – identity or “truth” of photographic images.

Perhaps most notable of all commentators upon the indexical nature of photography has been the French literary theorist and philosopher Roland Barthes whose 1964 Essay “The Rhetoric of the Image” proclaimed that the photograph is a “message without a code.” (other theorists argue something similar when they claim that photography is “transparent” to its subject) For Barthes this unique feature of photography is a consequence of its “absolutely analogical nature.” Barthes argued that photography should thus be differentiated from “drawing which, even when denoted, is a coded message.”

Since 1964 many theorists have followed in Barthes’ footsteps, variously arguing for the unique status of photography, its “truth claims”, its essential “objectivity”, “immediacy” or “reality.” But rather than explore the intricacies of these theories I’d like instead to make a point that may well have been obvious right from the outset.

The smoke rising from a chimney is not a representation and nor is a shadow, an echo or the miniature view spied in a dewdrop. It is true that these things have direct causes but the fact that these are implied, suggested, connoted, denoted, indicated, signified or otherwise made evident does not bring about a transformation of their subsequent effects into representations. An obvious or inevitable connection between an effect and its cause does not yield a representation. Representations are the products of intentional acts of substitution.

And what then of the unique status of photography? Certainly it can’t be anything to do with its absolute analogical nature. And if it is, we are simply left with the very obvious question raised by digital photography. It might then be argued that the analogical nature of photography, to which Barthes was referring, was in fact closer to what C. S. Peirce meant when he wrote:

“Photographs, especially instantaneous photographs, are very instructive, because we know that they are in certain respects exactly like the objects they represent. But this resemblance is due to the photographs having been produced under such circumstances that they were physically forced to correspond point by point to nature.”

Notice though that Peirce states that photographs “are in certain respects exactly like the objects they represent.” Did he mean to say that they are exactly the same as the objects they represent? Presumably not. To be exactly like is precisely not to be exactly the same. If Peirce had been more exacting he should perhaps have written: photographs are in certain respects and in certain circumstances perceptually indiscriminable from the things they represent. In other words, if the circumstances of presentation are very tightly controlled (in a lab experiment for example), we can find that we are unable to discriminate the difference between a photograph and whatever it represents in a variety of respects. It is nonetheless likely that we could easily distinguish between the representation and its object but it is important to point out here that conceptual distinguishability and perceptual discriminability are distinctly different. We are capable of distinguishing between things as a consequence of our ability to use language, whereas our capacity to discriminate perceptually is genetically acquired. Infants don’t have to learn to see photographic representations any more than they have to learn to see. Distinguishing, on the other hand, requires the development conceptual understanding.

It should be apparent then, that our genetically acquired ability to perceptually discriminate or, more precisely, to fail to discriminate, is the decisive factor that enables photographic representation. And it should also be noted that this includes all photorealistic depictions, despite Barthes’ logically unsupportable contention that all drawings are coded.

It turns out then, that Peirce’s theory of the index – at least as it pertains to photographs – is incapable of throwing much light upon the nature of  photography. It both lacks analytical precision and places too great an emphasis on the immediate causal history of photographs. As every digital photograph clearly attests, the causal history – even the immediate causal history - of the photographic image is often little more than a mystery to most of us. The same can be said of analogue photography in fact. This isn’t to say that the causal history of photographs is unimportant. Of course, some makers of photographic images deliberately choose to emphasise the indexical aspects of their craft; to draw attention to the processes of production, to the methods, qualities and materiality of the print and so on. In this sense they rely on, or seek to encourage, our abilities to make distinctions, to recognise, to compare and to distinguish. We might also say that these often subtle qualities draw upon our sensibilities, but this word demands a little care. If by sensibilities we mean some kind of genetically inherited ability to sense the finer details and qualities of things then we might have reason to be sceptical. Are our sensibilities genetically acquired? To some small degree perhaps they are, but for the most part our sensibilities are developed and refined through experience and most especially through considered attention, assisted significantly by our abilities to use language. Sensibilities are cultivated.

It might also be argued that photographs function by way of reference, signification or meaning. There is no doubt at all that photographs indicate, connote, denote, signify and allude to all kinds of things but they are by no means reliant upon these forms of signification because meaning, like sensibility, derives from our skills as language users. Although photography and other forms of non-verbal representation are enormously influenced, assisted and informed by language – by our abilities to distinguish - they are made possible by circumstances that must certainly have preceded our capacity to use language. They are derived moreover from a felicitous vulnerability in our perceptual capacities, a systematic perceptual weakness that we have discovered how to exploit to our profound and extraordinary advantage.

The Rules of Composition

Edward Weston, "Shell", 1927

“To consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk. Such rules and laws are deduced from the accomplished fact; they are the products of reflection.” -Edward Weston

If you do a internet search for the “rules of composition” you’ll find that most of the listings are concerned with photography whereas if you do a search for “pictorial composition” the majority of links will be about painting. This is a revealing disparity which suggests that with photography at least, composition is perceived to have determinate rules, which if followed correctly will lead to images of greater power or articulacy. In the case of painting, despite the fact that numerous principles of composition have been studied, expounded and contested over the centuries, there remains a comparatively relaxed attitude towards the potential of composition. Presumably this difference in attitude stems from painting’s long established position as a Fine Art medium.

Certainly there are many artists over the years who have paid a great deal of attention to the orchestration of spatial relationships within their images and there is also no doubt that an inappropriate structuring of visual information within an image can do a great deal to undermine or ruin what might otherwise constitute a strong picture. However, the function, interpretation and meaning of different compositional structures has been repeatedly shown to be so culturally and historically contingent that there is very little faith amongst artists in the idea of a universal language of composition let alone a set of immutable rules. If there were such as a set of rules then we’d all have something like H.R Poore’s tiresome "Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures" as our bible and the pictorial arts would be so much the worse for it.

Strictly speaking photographic images, unlike drawings or paintings, are rarely “composed” in the sense that we have come to understand the word. Unless the subject has been deliberately staged or arranged, photographs would be better understood to have been “framed” in the sense that the boundaries of the photographic image have been definitively positioned with respect to the subject. The choices of tilt, pitch, and swivel of the camera, the focal length of the lens, the proximity to the subject, and point-of-view are all variable to an extraordinary degree.

“At bottom, it is a matter of surrounding with a frame a portion of one's cone of vision, while standing in the right place at the right time. Like chess, or writing, it is a matter of choosing from among given possibilities, but in the case of photography the number of possibilities is not finite but infinite.” John Szarkowski

Viewed through the camera, the four edges of the photographic frame rigidly maintain their relation with one another and changing a single aspect in the frame therefore alters all aspects of the resulting image. In contrast, drawn or painted compositions allow both the arrangement, addition and removal of elements within the image. Before the advent of digital photography, this mutability was often claimed as a unique strength of drawing and painting over photography. I’m not going to argue the pros and cons of photography over drawing and painting here. Opinion has been divided since the very invention of photography and will, no doubt, continue so long as practitioners, champions and other stakeholders feel threatened or provoked by the apparent strengths or weaknesses of rival media. But the differences do provide us with a way to further our understanding of the qualities and character of each, and these are thus, on occasion, worth examining in closer detail.

Drawing, by its very nature, takes time to carry out and therefore encourages consideration of composition as the work progresses. Photographs by contrast, often being instantaneous, provide relatively scant opportunity for consideration in the moment of production, or worse still, they tend to encourage conventional and unadventurous attitudes or approaches toward composition.

It is plainly evident that the massive rise in the popularity and ubiquity of photography, whilst it has in many ways democratised photography and photographic composition, has also encouraged many inherited and unquestioned habits amongst its users. Horizons are kept level, straight edges are aligned with the edges of the frame, heads tend to be kept in the centre or at least fully in the frame and cropped features are most frequently avoided. These are the conventions of contemporary vernacular photography and for the most part they are sufficient because they echo the most frequently repeated conventions of pictorial representation seen in painting, film and TV.

Everyone has occasionally either made or seen those accidental or naïve images with tilted, cropped or awkwardly positioned features or with a figure sitting beneath a potted plant which seems to grow from the top of their head. With digital photography these mistakes are easily deleted but is there not a danger that we may also loose those rare gems that on second or third glance reveal something extraordinary?

One of the strengths of any medium is it’s ability to conceal it’s artificiality and to create a convincing illusion. A medium’s role is to mediate after all, not to draw attention to itself. Artifice has it’s uses of course, and images which draw attention to their form or the conventions of representation are often instructive and very occasionally worthy of further critical attention. Such instances make ‘form’ (the “medium” if we follow Marshal McLuhan) the very content (“message”) of the work and whilst formalism has its place, most users of media prefer not to be reminded of the flaws, faults or artificiality of communication and expression. This is why most of us prefer to spell correctly and to speak fluently. We tend to prefer our media transparent because this allows us to focus our attention on the content. Most people choose conventional compositional structures for the same reason. But in our desire to avoid making an issue of composition, might we be perpetuating and consolidating an orthodoxy which limits our creative capacity and as a consequence forms an unspoken but increasingly rigid set of aesthetic rules which subtly govern our pictorial choices?

“…rules are not intended as a set of fetters to cripple those who use them, and it is not intended that the student should absolutely abide by them. The object is to train his mind so that he may select with ease, and, when he does select, know why one aspect of a subject is better than another."

Henry Peach Robinson, “Pictorial Effect in Photography”, 1881

Robert Cumming

A few weeks ago I was sent a link to the work of Caleb Charland who produces black-and-white photographs of pseudo-experiments and strange Heath Robinsonesque constructions using light, magnets, water and various other objects and materials. I was immediately struck by the similarities between Charland's work and the work of Robert Cumming who was very active in the 1970s West Coast American conceptual art scene.

I was lucky enough to see an exhibition of Robert Cumming's work at MoMA in New York in 1996 and whilst there I also bought a copy of the exhibition catalogue. Unfortunately Cummings work is fairly poorly represented in history books and monographs on his work are very rare so I often find myself lending my catalogue to students.

Lending books to people is a risky business at the best of times but when it's a book that you're particularly fond of there's a real disincentive to let it out of your sight. I've lost numerous books and DVDs in this way over the years, so I'm now in the habit of looking artists up on the Internet and sending students web links rather than lending out my precious book collection. It's not an ideal situation because the materiality, structure and precision of books is inevitably lost when they're translated into a crude set of online images. However, when the choice is between a pale simulacrum or nothing at all, I think most of us would prefer the former.

When I looked up Robert Cumming online I was both surprised and disappointed to find that there's barely anything available at all. As a student I remember seeing several images of Cumming's work in different books and exhibitions and being really inspired by the inventive and quirky charm of his images. Hopefully the following may go some way to at least giving a vague impression of what a remarkable image maker Robert Cumming was in the prime of his engagement with photography.

Deluge (3 of 5)

Underwater Photography

Preparing for "Schwerinblicke - Künstlersichten", Staatliches Museum Schwerin, Germany, April 2010

Clothing Moths

Fourty-two moths and one fly.

Who Knowes Raymond Moore?

Raes Knowes, 1980

When I was an art foundation student at Trent Polytechnic I lodged in the house of an art teacher working at a nearby school. Ivan shared my interest in photography, and one evening he invited me to watch a television programme about the work of a British photographer called Raymond Moore. As with many of the artists I saw at this time, I tried to emulate Moore’s work as a method of understanding his approach and ideas and as a way to develop my own.

Untitled, 1987

The following year Raymond Moore visited the course (which I had subsequently joined) as a visiting lecturer. There were a total of 18 students on the course at the time and Ray was only employed for a single day, so I was lucky to have a tutorial with him. I can remember very little of what he said about the work I showed him. I had been making a lot of colour landscape images with a Diana camera at the time. I imagine he was rather unimpressed with the distortion and vignetting caused by the camera and I’m sure he felt that this was an unnecessary distraction.

Maryport, 1980

At this time Ray and Mary Moore Cooper used to run occasional photography workshops at their home in the Scottish borders, which were attended by serious amateurs and students. Quite soon after the events described above, my course was offered a free place on one of these workshops and it came down to the toss of a coin between myself and a rival student. Luckily for me I won the toss, but my good fortune was short-lived since, for reasons which I fail to remember, the workshop was called off. As compensation, I was offered a free place for the following year but before the year was out, Ray had died at the age of 67 from a heart attack.

Forrest Town, 1978

A year later, and in a completely different phase of my work, influenced, for the most part, by long discussions about Marxist aesthetics and the emancipation of the proletariat, I was asked by an exchange student what I thought of the work of Ray Moore. I replied cynically "Genteel nonsense!" or something to that effect. I remember the response very well, which was far more than my ungenerous reply deserved. The exchange student asked me whether I thought that such work might become meaningful to me later in life. I don't remember my response but since my tendency at the time was always to replace lack of opinion with dismissive cynicism I assume that it must have been in the negative.

Galloway, 1977

Three years later, while still studying (and my Marxist tendencies having been subtly mollified) I was offered the opportunity of work assisting Mary Moore Cooper with the Raymond Moore Archive in Dumfries. I spent several weeks camping in a nearby campsite and cycling into Gracefield Arts Centre to make contact prints of several thousand rolls of film which Ray had never contact-printed, believing as he did, that 35mm contact sheets were next-to-useless in determining the most successful image to be printed. Once I had served this initiation in the dim confines of a darkroom and the similarly cramped gloom of a tent, I was allowed to assist Mary more closely with the preparation of the archive. The following year I was invited back to Dumfriesshire to assist Mary with her own work. Throughout these times I was uniquely privileged with an opportunity to experience first-hand the images, paraphernalia and library which Ray and Mary had amassed and to hear many fascinating accounts of their life together from Mary and friends and visitors to the archive.

Maryport, 1982

The extraordinary thing about these priceless experiences was that I was actually being paid - I couldn't have afforded to do otherwise. The impact was therefore twofold - I was able to save money to enable my final studies and I was being exposed to the work and rich remnants of one of the most gifted British photographers of the 20th Century. You may feel that such a claim is overstating the point - for instance, how come Raymond Moore isn't a household name? Or why, at least, don't photography students know his work? Unfortunately the answer to this question is the most lamentable aspect of the whole Raymond Moore story and one which continues to shroud a body of work which represents such a profoundly important part of the legacy of British photographic history.

Dumfriesshire, 1985

Galloway, 1981

Ray was fascinated by the commonplace, by the quotidian and by the landscape of border towns and domesticated borderlands. Nobody has taught me more about the variety, depth and nuances of boundaries and boundedness than Raymond Moore. Whether through fields or walls; fences or frames; windows or verges or darkness and light, Moore was a visionary of the boundary.

Allonby, 1981

Unfortunately, too few people are interested in such subtleties in the UK, even though (and perhaps in spite of the fact that) Moore’s vision is archetypically British: its modesty, its reserve and its gentility – yes, I still believe it’s genteel, but it speaks with such a charm and quiet wit and such a sophisticated precision of form that, understated as it is, it vehemently questions why so many people, who should know better, are seduced by the mind-numbing superficiality of a Crewdson or La Chappelle.

Galloway, 1980

I have a Raymond Moore print on my wall at home (which Mary kindly gave me as a gift) and every time I look at it I'm filled with both admiration at it's achievement and sadness at the intractability and lack of vision of people more intent upon their own sense of something’s monetary value rather than its more ineffable and therefore difficult to quantify value as a product of human ingenuity and love – for certainly Ray loved what he did and wished to share this love through his work and his teaching. I can’t help thinking that the history of British photography is so much the worse off for the neglect of the deeply significant contribution of Raymond Moore. And I don’t mean history in the sense of something dead and gone but rather in the sense of something which still has the potential to change people’s lives - that is an experience which no pricetag can ever put a value on. It's depressing to know that this potential continues to be withheld at a time when the work's ability to resonate with people can still be felt in its immediate effect.

Or, as John Berger has written:

“...art is not timeless and eternal. Great works survive their period, but that is not to say that they do not die. After that period they live again by virtue of a sort of resurrection. This after-life, however, is never the same intense, committed thing as their original life... If this is true, one can better understand the horrific absurdity of artists consciously working for the future - ‘ I shall only be properly appreciated in 100 years’ time.’... We must recognise that there is such a thing as the natural death of a work of art. Nor is it morbidity that makes me say this is a recognition we should celebrate. Only if we recognise the mortality of art shall we cease to stand in such superstitious awe of it – only then shall we consider art expendable and so have the courage to risk using it for our own immediate, urgent, only important purposes.”

For more infomation about Raymond Moore visit here