The great American intellectual, Susan Sontag, had profound doubts about the morality of photography, lamenting that every subject of the camera is “depreciated into an article of consumption; promoted into an item for aesthetic appreciation. “ (“On Photogaphy,” Susan Sontag, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977.) It would be interesting to know what she would have made of the work of Carlos and Jason Sanchez, whose work is featured at Montreal’s Mois de la Photo, where even the abduction of a little girl or the tragedy of a mudslide have been served up for the spectator.Perhaps Sontag would be reassured that the Sanchez brothers do not in fact directly represent reality. This is not “truth-telling,” as Sontag would call it. Every one of the Sanchez brothers’ photographs is the result of sometimes months of preparation in creating a scene. The artifice is crucial.
Sontag might question the ethics of a photo-journalist going to a warzone and claiming to convey to the viewer the truth about that war, but the Sanchez brothers approach reality differently. In harrowing photos such as “Rescue Effort,” they are not directly depicting reality, but instead exploring a narrative. The brothers create scenes, characters, scenarios and conflicts, just like you might expect from a film director or even a novelist. Jason Sanchez says, “I feel that each image has a story in it.” (“Mois de la Photo 2007 — Narratives of Nastiness.” 12 Sep. 2007 <http://www.hour.ca/visualarts/visualarts.aspx?iIDArticle=12813>)
So rather than the photograph freezing reality, it freezes a moment in a fiction from the Sanchez brothers’ (often morbid) imaginations. This liberation from the responsibility of “truth-telling” gives the photographs an unblemished emotional impact. Instead of worrying about the fate of the little girl in “Abduction,” who we know was not actually abducted, we are instead freed up to think about the theme and the possible narrative that the image evokes. We are “experiencing” the experience, rather than being wrenched from our own reality and into a very different one.
In an utterly different medium, some of the most interesting sound exhibits at espaceSONO have the same effect. In what I will call the “big black box,” you can listen to Phill Niblock’s “grind.” Niblock has captured the recurring noises of an industrial environment. It made me remember a time a few years ago when I did some factory work, and the machines’ whirring and coughing was full in my ears. They made their own strange symphony. Because of having to work, it wasn’t possible to reflect long on the sounds. But in the big black box, all distractions from the industrial sounds were eliminated. The listener selects the desired track, sits backs and soaks it up, and almost all other stimuli are gone. Before entering, I was worried that the big black box might be like a sensory deprivation tank. But the big black box shares almost nothing in common with a sensory deprivation tank. It might be better described as a sensory enhancement tank, since it focuses on one sense, auditory, and amplifies it to the almost complete exclusion of all others, purifying the experience.
The Big Black Box
After my time in the big black box, I visited a nearby bed, with more headphones available. Soon I was lying back and enjoying the sounds of Jamie Allan’s Binaural Architecture, 258 E. Street, New York City. It was like taking a break in your hotel room, leaving the window open for the city to steal inside on the airwaves. Sometimes the experience was jolting. It evoked images of hustle and bustle happening at a remove sufficient to eliminate any associated stress. It wasn’t me stuck in traffic; it wasn’t me fighting for a spot on the sidewalk.
Both installations at Le Mois de la Photo and espaceSONO vividly took me away from quotidian life in Montreal and into utterly different experiences. But it was certainly the Sanchez brothers who created the most lasting impact. Their photos do indeed tell stories, whereas mere sound – bereft of linear structure – seems to tell only part of a story. There is a lot missing. After about forty five minutes at espaceSONO, I was pleased to rejoin life and enjoy the full spectrum of sensory stimulation on offer.
Mois de La Photo – Photo I took whilst there to prove I was there. Click and be disappointed.
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October 2, 2007 at 11:29 pm
t/c/v
Thanks for your — if I may say it — perceptive words. It is intriguing that you understand sound as ‘seeming to only tell part of a story’; for me such statements — insofar as they pit sound against sight — are part of a long-lasting ocularcentrism in the arts. What is a story? Does a ‘telling’ not involve, implicitly, sound? Should we not also think, here, of what the body is telling you in its various positions in the exhibit? Also, since when doe a sound-exhibit *negate* sight? One’s eyes still function just as one’s ear keep listening as one looks at a photograph. Rather, ocularcentrism denies what it sees when it refuses to hear. We could also ask, thinking of the role of the Wagnerian themeatic, does music too only tell part of the story whereas the eyes tell it all? Ocularcentrism is an interesting though untenable proposition that only reveals the historical bias of one sense over another. Perhaps such attempts at (aesthetic) judgment are increasingly useless — and a different response deserves to be crafted for the 21C. yrs, tobias c. van Veen (curator, espaceSONO)
May 8, 2009 at 5:26 am
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