Since we were born, the first approach we get to know this world is by our eyes. In our memory, the images always come before the language. They play an essential role in how we understand the world. When you are asked to imagine the life of a rich and successful person, what comes to your mind is a series of posts that you see on social media or news media that are widely spread with champagne in their hands, dressed in fashion on an island vacation, or in a movie wearing expensive watches and accessories in a high-class party. When you try to visualize a fire or a car accident, what comes to mind is how the actors in the movie managed to get out of danger. But what are the things that shape our imagination of reality? It is undeniable that Hollywood, advertisements, political slogans, TV programs, social media, etc., have all taken on this task. The next question is, do we just irresistibly absorb everything they feed us? Do we just see these images as pure entertainment or harmlessness?
The Era of the Image Explosion
It is estimated that the number of photographs taken worldwide was 1 billion in 1930 and increased to 25 billion by 1980. At that time, people were still taking pictures on film. By 2012, people were taking 380 billion photos a year, almost all of them digital, and in 2014, 10,000 billion photos were taken, almost a decade ago. Every two minutes, more photos are taken by Americans alone than were produced in the entire 19th century. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the world today is a society dominated and depicted by images and pictures. The emergence and popularity of the Internet have encouraged this phenomenon. Although people used to absorb information from visual media such as television and newspapers, only a very small number of people had the power to decide what to broadcast.
The advent of the Internet has freed people from the limitation of switching between a few channels. It has changed the way we see everything, including the way we see the world. This is where the amount of information tends to be infinite. And then these screens seem to bring infinite freedom, but in fact, they are a carefully controlled and filtered view of the world. Through the Internet and various portable devices, the penetration and impact of images are even greater than before. How to view the world at a time when the number of images has multiplied exponentially has become an important contemporary issue to consider.
To an ever-greater extent, our experience is governed by pictures, pictures in newspapers and magazines, on television and in the cinema. Next to these pictures firsthand, the experience begins to retreat, to seem more and more trivial. While it once seemed that pictures had the function of interpreting reality, it now seems that they have usurped it. Therefore, it becomes imperative to understand the picture itself, not to uncover a lost reality but to determine how a picture becomes a signifying structure of its own accord. But pictures are characterized by something which, though often remarked, is insufficiently understood: that they are extremely difficult to distinguish at the level of their content, that they are to an extraordinary degree opaque to meaning. The actual event and the fictional event, the benign and the horrific, the mundane and the exotic, the possible and the fantastic: all are fused into the all-embracing similitude of the picture. (Crimp, 1977)
We are not really ourselves.
The way we dress, the way we walk, the coffee we drink, the restaurants we eat at, the selfies we take and the posts we make on social media are all part of a series of conscious and unconscious depictions of ourselves, the so-called "Performances of the Living". Nowadays, visual culture is not just a way of seeing what is happening; it is something we participate in physically. We no longer imagine and shape the world from real experiences or imaginations based on experiences but through images and images in our lives, such as pop culture and advertisements.
Theatre director, Richard Schechner, has written that performances – of art, rituals, or ordinary life – are "restored behaviours," "twice-behaved behaviours," performed actions that people train for and rehearse. He argued that all forms of human activity are performances, consisting of actions that we have taken in the past to create a new action.[1] This statement is also subtly similar in some ways to Simone Bovary's classic statement in The Second Sex that one is not born as a woman, but becomes a woman.[2] A performance is not just a show on stage, or in front of audiences; a performance can also be an act of gender, race, or class that a person performs in everyday life.
The artists of the Pictures Generation are the pioneers of this issue. From the very beginning of the image explosion, they were keenly aware of the invisible hand behind it. They were first and foremost consumers, they also learned to adopt a cool, critical attitude toward the very same mechanisms of seduction and desire that played upon them. (Eklund, 2021)
The Pioneers Who Were Underestimated
The title comes from a 1977 exhibition at Artist Space by Douglas Crimp called Pictures, which included works by Troy Braunuch, Jack Goldstein, Sherrie Levine, Robert Longo, and Philip Smith. However, the exhibition did not receive the attention it deserved until two years later. In an article entitled "The Photographic Activity of Postmodernism" in the 1979 issue of October[3], curator Douglas Crimp re-edited and strengthened his statement and included Cindy Sherman (who, however, was not initially included in the 1977 exhibition). This exhibition and the concept he was trying to address only gained more attention and critical historical discussion after the article.
The Pictures Generation is not an art movement initiated by a collective and simultaneous agreement of a group of artists, but a term added to it by later generations when they look back on this period. Essentially, they were a loose-knit group that appropriated, quoted, cut, and re-framed a large number of ready-made images and videos from newspapers, magazines, advertisements, and films as a feature of their work. They lived in a time when images were just beginning to explode, when Hollywood movies and television were popularized, when newspaper and magazine articles began to be paired with large numbers of pictures as the main axis, and when print advertisements were bombarded with images, from black and white to colour. They lived through a period of extreme optimism when the U.S. economy was booming and growing, but at the same time, they also experienced the horrible and silent social atmosphere of the Cold War and the threat of nuclear weapons. The graphic artists experienced major historical events of polarization and grew up in a schizophrenic social context. The works of philosophers such as Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, and Jean Baudrillard were also translated into the United States during this period. We are not born with our identities and lifestyles but learn them through the process of socialization. These templates that we learn are produced through highly sophisticated social constructions of gender, race, sexual orientation, and citizenship, visible and invisible and deeply embedded in social institutions. The emergence of mass media has exacerbated this mode of social operation. The philosophical theory centred on this idea coincides with the confusion and struggle that artists encountered in this era. The Pictures artists appropriated existing images and re-contextualized them in order to disrupt their original intentions and attempt to deconstruct the power structures inherent beneath the seemingly innocuous images of mass communication, such as gender consciousness, racial issues, stereotypes, etc. In addition, they have brought groundbreaking and innovative ideas to postmodernism. Roland Barthes' essay "The Death of the Author" is generally regarded as a key article that influenced the Pictures Generation.
"Barthes realigned the focus of literary theory from the creation of language to its enunciation. This meant that the act of interpretation was more important than the act of creation. Artists were suddenly freed from the burden and the expectations of complete originality; what mattered now was how artists could interpret, reconfigure, and reposition already extant works and ideas to create other meanings." (Saggese, 2014) Since then, appropriation has become a common technique used by artists to explore their strategies. In the early 1990s, an American artist, Carrie Mae Weems, used the work of 19th-century photographer J. T. Zealy in his project, Sea Island Series. The latter work is "an objectification of the bodies of South Carolina slaves, reducing them to specimens in order to prove a theory about the innate inferiority of people of African descent." Weems then places the work in a different context through recolouring and new narrative descriptions, giving it a new and distinctive meaning. It subverts the original racist and discriminatory label and instead discusses the history of oppression of his community. (Saggese, 2014)
The Invisible Hands Behind the Pictures: The Power of Photography
Richard Prince appropriates the cowboy in Marlboro cigarettes' magazine ads to reveal the clichés behind the image of the cowboy. When Marlboro attempted to rebrand filter cigarettes, once thought to be for women only, as a male product, it relied on the simple and superficial imagination of the public and pop culture about the myth of the American West and the cowboy as a symbol of masculinity. In Untitled (I shop therefore I am) by Barbara Kruger, she quoted the slogan made and widely circulated by the media and advertising company to emphasize that most media aimed at women is based on male speculation about women's desires, lives and ideals, creating the belief that women only need material things to feel happy, and that by doing so, men can have them under their control. The work of these outstanding artists does not merely use avant-garde creative practices but exposes the 'truths' behind the manipulation of these manufactured images. When masculinity is portrayed as a cowboy figure and women are depicted as believers in materialism, the artists dissolve the sugar layer by unwrapping the symbols and exposing these manipulations to the public. However, the questions are not just to expose the hands behind the pictures but to discover and discuss where these hands are from and how they are able to manipulate the public.
The use of images to manipulate popular ideology is not a new thing and has been around for years. In modernist photography, the essence of the medium is promoted to the peak, and the function of photography - the camera - is seen as recording reality and representing the truth. In this period, photography was not just a machine to capture reality but was seen as "the representative of the truth". In John Tagg, The Burden of Representation, an example is given of how FSA treats photography as a tool to control the ideology.[4] Initially, the director of FSA, Roy Stryker, received too many photographs depicting America as a home for the elderly, many of whom appeared to be frail and not too concerned with current events. Initially, the director, Roy Stryker, received too many photographs depicting America as a home for the elderly, many of whom appeared to be frail and not too concerned with current events. So, he asked the photographers to take "images that look happy and hopeful - women sewing, men reading. He also drilled holes in the negatives, to destroy 100,000 of the 270,000 photographs taken over eight years. At this time, the photographic record itself was constructed by the government as a machine for surveillance, transformation, and control. Photography is also used as a means of documentation and a source of evidence in scientific, medical, and judicial institutions. It no longer possesses the power to simply capture and depict reality. It is also given the "power to speak the truth". The images, like the states, are not neutral. The reproduction produced by the camera is highly symbolic, and the power it exercises comes from the governmental authorities. The FSA uses photography to produce the "truth" as a control mechanism, and then disseminates the "truth" through the appropriate channels recognized by the government.[5]
Here we can also relate to the 'truth system' advocated by Foucault. Each society has its regime of truth, its 'general politics' of truth: that is, the types of discourse it harbours and causes to function as true, the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true from false statements, the way in which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures which are valorized for obtaining truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true. In societies like ours the 'political economy' of truth is characterized by five historically important trails: 'truth' is centred on the form of scientific discourse and the institutions which produce it; it is subject to a constant economic and political incitation (the demand for truth, as much for economic production as for political power): it is the object, under diverse forms, of an immense diffusion and consumption (it circulates in apparatuses of education and information whose extent is relatively widespread within the social body, notwithstanding certain strict limitations); it is produced and transmitted under the control, dominant if not exclusive, of a few great political and economic apparatuses (university, army, writing, media... ); lastly, it is the stake of a whole political debate and social confrontation ('ideological" struggles). (Foucault, Sheridan and Kritzman, 2015)
The Truth itself is the power. Forms of knowledge are produced and recognized as ’True' through these institutions. Knowledge and power are a series of mutually articulated and supported loops. The problem is not simply to rise against 'the constructed truths'. Instead, it is about going beyond the notion of 'control' and 'manipulation' and becoming aware of the grasping of the state or specific institutions over 'social issues'. This leads us to re-examine the essence and function of representation.[6]
Prince exposes the manipulation behind the images through appropriate cigarette commercials. Cindy Sherman uses stage to highlight the stereotypical portrayal of women in Hollywood. All these tactics distil the power behind the images. The authorities use the "Truth" provided by the images to play with the public's perceptions. These “Truth Systems” are gradually organized into a set of mainstream values that are engraved in the public's ideology. Sexy and masculine men are linked to smoking, muscle, and toughness. Female values are linked to softness, appendages of males, and housewives.
The Ongoing Reflection by Contemporary Artist: Alfredo Jaar
Alfredo Jaar once said in an interview that images are not innocent. Images and media are keys to this: “Every single image out there in the world, represents a conception of the world. Represents an ideological conception of the world. They tell us things about the world.”[7] In his work, we can see the agreement responds to the theory of Foucault.
Untitled (Newsweek) explores the mainstream media's selection of issues and the brutality of war through 17 Newsweek magazine covers. He used Newsweek as a symbol of the mainstream media and the dates on the magazine covers (April 16, 1994, to August 1, 1994) as a symbol of the period of the Rwandan massacre. And the descriptions of the situation in Rwanda are attached at the bottom of each body. The "major issues" on the magazine covers included economics, medical science, sports and entertainment gossip. Until the 17th week, the Rwandan massacre finally appeared on the cover with a crying child in the background and countless bodies lying in disarray. Jaar, like Pictures Generation, uses "pictures" from mass media, taking them out of their original context and putting new meaning into them. Jaar explores the interrelationship between contemporary politics and images, digging into issues such as the production and circulation of images, exposing the economic and social issues embedded in contemporary ways of viewing, and offering viewers new perspectives and points of view. The same approach also appears in his other works. For example, in Searching Africa in Life, 1996, he used all the covers of Life Magazine, which has over 2500 images and arranged them in order. As the work's title, he invites the viewer to search for images about Africa among them. Life is a long-established magazine like Time. "To see life; see the world" is its inception, meaning they bring the world to the reader's eyes. However, when the viewers try to find a cover about Africa, they only get five animal-related photos. In another work, From Time to Time (2006), Jaar selected nine magazine covers related to Africa from Time magazine and divided them into three categories - animals, hunger, and disease.
Through these works, Jaar not only calls attention to the issues happening in Africa but also operates as an indictment of the mass media. He accuses the misrepresentation and stereotypes of the African continent and culture in the West, which is under the control of mass media. He also explores the politics of the image - no image is innocent.
Images and pictures will only become more, not less, in the future. By re-examining the works of the Pictures Generation, we are not only asserting their irreplaceable place in the history of art and photography. As Jaar said, because we act in the world, so everything we do represents a conception of the world. In that sense, we are all political. It is also a reminder for us to reflect on how to look at the ocean of images we are living in now and keep sober to sail on instead of drowning in the flow. The politics of images are always the most significant issue we need to put on our minds first.
[1] Schechner, R. (2020). PERFORMANCE STUDIES : an introduction. S.L.: Routledge, p.p. 13.
[2] De Beauvoir, S. (1949). The Second Sex. Vintage Classics.
[3] Crimp, D. (1979). October. [online] MIT Press. Available at: https://direct.mit.edu/octo/issue/number/171 [Accessed 14 Sep. 2022].
[4] Tagg, J. (2007). The burden of representation: essays on photographies and histories. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
[5] Tagg, J. (2007). The burden of representation: essays on photographies and histories. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
[6] Tagg, J. (2007). The burden of representation: essays on photographies and histories. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
[7] channel.louisiana.dk. (2013). Alfredo Jaar: Images are Not Innocent. [online] Available at: https://channel.louisiana.dk/video/alfredo-jaar-images-are-not-innocent [Accessed 8 Oct. 2022].