{"id":572,"date":"2013-01-12T09:53:42","date_gmt":"2013-01-12T09:53:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/?page_id=572"},"modified":"2013-02-23T10:29:15","modified_gmt":"2013-02-23T10:29:15","slug":"kelly-klingensmith-living-with-his-camera","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/?page_id=572","title":{"rendered":"Kelly Klingensmith\u2014Living With His Camera"},"content":{"rendered":"

Return to Issue 1 Table of Contents\u00a0<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

Kelly Klingensmith<\/strong> is an Assistant Professor, Department of English at Western New England University, Springfield, MA 01119.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Living With His Camera<\/strong><\/i> (2003) explores Jane Gallop\u2019s longtime cohabitation with photographer Dick Blau and his camera. (All images by Dick Blau with permission.)<\/p>\n

\"klingensmith<\/a>Gallop conceives of the book as an exploration of \u201ca series of intersections\u201d between a selection of Blau\u2019s family photographs and resonant, influential books on photography\u2014Roland Barthes\u2019 Camera Lucida<\/i>, Susan Sontag\u2019s On Photography<\/i>, Kathryn Harrison\u2019s novel Exposure<\/i>, and Pierre Bourdieu\u2019s Photography<\/i> (p. 12). As each of the four chapters \u201cstages an encounter\u201d between Blau\u2019s images and theories of photography, Gallop produces nuanced readings of each text (p. 4). At these intersections, she theorizes from her own experience what it means to be a domestic partner, mother, and photographic subject. As Gallop says of Barthes\u2019, hers, too, is writing that \u201ccombines intellectual work with self-reflection, theory with memoir\u201d (p. 13).<\/p>\n

One of the overarching concerns of Living With His Camera<\/i> is to investigate \u201cthe way the photograph both is and isn\u2019t representative,\u201d something readers see at most every encounter with Blau\u2019s luminous pictures (p. 3). Whether it has to do with the interstices of space or time that the still photograph necessarily omits, Gallop\u2019s careful attention to the visible details of the images and the contexts of photographic production repeatedly demonstrates this fundamental truth of photography.<\/p>\n

Blau\u2019s unconventional family photographs reveal ties to the ethnographic work he has done in projects like Skyros Carnival<\/em><\/a> (2010), Bright Balkan Morning<\/i> (2002), and Polka Happiness<\/i> (1992) as well as his history in theater. For over forty years, Blau has also been making art photographs of the people closest to him (many to be collected in the book-in-progress, Thicker Than Water<\/em><\/a>). The intimate images of family life in Living With His Camera<\/em> combine some of the haunting revelations of Sally Mann\u2019s with the affectionate irony of Larry Sultan\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\"klingensmith<\/a><\/p>\n

In order to explore Blau\u2019s images deeply, Gallop accesses multiple perspectives. Reading first as spectator and feminist psychoanalytic critic, she finds in one image a mother and son\u2019s hostility toward the father\/photographer who has intruded on the intimacy of the boy\u2019s evening bath. In their striking genetic and compositional similarity, she sees no less than the father\u2019s \u201cgenetic irrelevance\u201d (p. 41). Speaking here from the position of spectator, Gallop reads the image as one that \u201c[exposes] the patriarchal underpinnings of polite family photography\u201d (p. 42). But the image is more and other than this. Taking up the alternate position of photographed subject allows Gallop to recall the typical patterns of home life that include a more equitable division of domestic labor and far less hostility than the photograph alone suggests.<\/p>\n

In something the typical academic book on photography can not offer, Blau voices his own memory of the production of the image, which serves not to pin down its ultimate meaning, but to demonstrate the way photographs are always more and less than what we see. He recalls directing his unwitting actors into the desired expression by opening the door and \u201ccommanding\u201d they look at him, knowing in advance the reaction he would receive (p. 43). \u201cBy sounding like a patriarch,\u201d Gallop writes, \u201che produced a tableau of resentment from the subjects of patriarchal authority. The response was so fleeting, I never even knew I\u2019d participated in a drama\u201d (p. 43).<\/p>\n

Here, as elsewhere in the book, photography is re-conceived as a collaborative process that requires, at least to some degree, the participation of its subjects. At another instance Gallop recalls holding an expression in the midst of an argument, helping to make the photographic record of her anger. In the book she also shares the negotiations that accompany decisions to make public the very private, an ethical imperative when photography is a family affair.<\/p>\n

Working between subjective experience and close readings of text and image, Gallop offers a convincingly dialogic mode of criticism that augments the existing body of theoretical work on photography. Readers will find, for instance, an immanently useful reading and revision of Sontag\u2019s influential theory in On Photography<\/i>.\u00a0