The article examines the SF Camerawork exhibition Agitate: Negotiating the Photographic Process, which was co-curated by the author

Bowen, Dore

English

SJSU ScholarWorks

San Jose State UniversitySJSU ScholarWorksFaculty Publications Art and Art History & Design DepartmentsJanuary 2003Photography in the Mix: Flora-Fauna-PhotoDore BowenSan Jose State University, dore.bowen@sjsu.eduFollow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/artdesign_pubPart of the Contemporary Art Commons, and the Photography CommonsThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Art and Art History & Design Departments at SJSU ScholarWorks. It has been acceptedfor inclusion in Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of SJSU ScholarWorks. For more information, please contactscholarworks@sjsu.edu.Recommended CitationDore Bowen. "Photography in the Mix: Flora-Fauna-Photo" Camerawork: A Journal of Photographic Arts (2003): 12-15.Photography in the Mix: FLORA-FAUNA-PHOTO Although photography changes with the times, it carries its history With it. This history is not innocent. "Power," writes Geoffrey Batchen, "inhabits the very grain of BY DORE BOWEN photography's existence."' The authority that photography wields is based on a Cartesian con-ceit, a mental distancing built into the primary establishing feature of the medium-perspective. Only such visual distancing allows for a "view"-a visual point organized around the eye of a monocular observer looking out upon the world as if onto a flat surface. The camera is a site for such outward exploration and inward rumination. Yet , the inarticulate presence of nature haunts this ocularcentric teleology. As Akira Mizuta Lippit suggests , photography can be understood as a "mourning apparatus " for those life forms that it kills off. ' While the history of photography involves documenting the disap-pearance of nature and animal life, it is , at the same time, the very condition that brings this death into being. For instance, the camera/lens apparatus is reported to have been realized when, in 1619, German scientist Christoph Scheiner scraped the sclera from the eye of an ox, which he then placed in a hole in a shutter.' This .story persists because it holds a mythical if not factual truth: photography is founded on the transformation of "nonhuman" elements-both flora and fauna-into the photographic. Quite literally, photographic print emulsion is ground from animal bones (and, in the early days, egg whites) , the paper base is derived from trees, and the metals , such as silver and palladium, are mined from the earth. While photography continues to be used extensively to picture wildlife, these elements lie latent, but negated, within the process itself. 12 VO LUME 30, No .1 SP RIN G/ SU MMER 2003 The works in Agitate: Negotiating the Photo-graphic Process allow this sacrifice to trouble the seemingly smooth surface of the print . This tension is ignited by Marco Breuer, an artist who creates an arena in which he compulsively struggles with his materials. Having used, at times, a hot-glue gun, sparklers, a sander, and his own blood, Breuer dramatizes photography's mastery of nature by forcing color to the surface of the paper. Less violent but no less determined, Kate Farra!! pursues shafts of undomesticated light that leak into the sealed darkroom. Staging the darkroom as a site of perme-ability, Farrall's installation encourages the viewer to gaze with the eyes of a beast-that is, down on all fours-in order to locate signs of life outside the black box. Seeking irregularity within the apparatus , Roger Newton encourages visual aberrations by creating his own lenses constructed of glass , oils, and (in one experiment) fish eyes. Since the lens structures knowledge and perception, Newton's altered lenses guide the viewer's eye elsewhere. This desire to stretch the limits of the photographic apparatus is furthered by Ann Hamilton, who, in her face to face series, discloses her own animality. By placing a pinhole camera in her mouth, Hamilton deprivileges the enlightened eye, emphasizing the less subdued orifice instead. Through this shift from eye to mouth, Hamilton introduces an alien element, what Lippit calls "the magnetic animal, " into her photographic transference. 5 Other artists in this exhibit engage with the plant life that underwrites photography by aban-doning the mediating lens altogether. For example, Binh Danh's prints are singularly direct experi-ments with light and chlorophyll. The process , however, is deceptively complex. Working with .EFT William Henry Fox Talbot. The Hay~t ck 1844 45 Courtesy of ~~cock Abbey Co!lect10n -llG T Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey. The Other S1de (L'Altro Law) 990. Presented by .abcr or 0 A "lf!:to Bussana Vee _ ltaJv Ackr~yc. c. Harvey crEatEd an Jrter or" illll\l sp ce by g:-owmg IJ!'lS< 0r •he waL '>f the room A yeJ.:ow shadow • f> by a ladder c n one of the w; us pr'>TdE'd •he mspiratJon to c eate photvwa~. s m gr s Roger Newton UntJ'I€"1, 997 ~ .at SJ!V p mt 20 X 40 NOTES 1 Ouoted m V1ck1 GGldberg, ed Photogruphy ·~ Pnnt Wntmgs frorr 1816 '?the Present !Albuquerque University of New MeXICO Press 1981), 56. The anopymou '84. article evaluates •he new photc,yraph1c ar• m gene1w, at.o hE daguerrE otyp• a· d ralotype processes 1r part1c ... uar. 2. Geoffrey Batchen, Bummg With De8II£ TliE Conceptwn of Photography iC<.,nbndge MA MI"" Pr ss 1 197 202 3. Ak,ra M1zuta L1pp1t, Electnc AmmaJ Toward a Rhetonc of Wilclllfe (Mmneapolls Umversity of Minnesota Press. 2000), 188. Lippit is speaking specifically of the figure of the ammal. I have extendec. h1. argument to plant ,Je as wei: 4. Some have attributed th1s apoc-ryphal tale to Rene Descartes 5. Lippit, Electric Animal. 166 Lipp1t explams that the f1gure of the ammal >perates as a foreign presence tuat seeps mto d!ld transforms • he language of which it is a part. 'The animal is magnetic because it draws the world-building subject toward an impossible convergence With the Lmits of world." Lippit con eludes. followmg philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, that "all 'becommgs' are ammal becommgs. · 6. Interview With Binh Da~h by Dav1d PacE December 2002. See the CD-F<.OM acrompanymg this Issue 7 Af]Un Appadurql. Modernity at Large Cultural Dimensions of Globalizatwn (Minneapolis Umvers •y Jl Mmnesota Press, 1996) 3 8. Ph1ltp Auslander wntes that the mcreasmg des1re for ' live performance ' Ignores the fact th<'t today perf >rmance ex1sts w1thm thE sw·•y of media culture. Far frcm t emg encroached upon. contammated, or threat ened by med1at10n, live perform-ance IS always already inscribed w1th trace. of the poss1b1llty of techmcal med1at1on (i.e. mediat1 zutwn) that defmes it as hve." Philip Au. lander Liveness Performance m a Mediatized Culture (London and New York Routledge 1999). 53 both digital files and the photocopy process, Danh creates a negative which he then places on the surface of a leaf for an indefinite amount of time ; it may take up to a month for the image to emerge. This organic/mechanical process is rooted in Danh's desire to link the scientific quest for knowledge to the unhurried and circular tempo of organic processes. Danh explains the quotidian metaphysics that compel him to print planetary imagery on yard leaves when he states that "instead of searching for the stars by looking up, we can look down." ' In a similar vein, Carlos Motta stages this rela-tionship between photography and nature as a communion between a tree and light-sensitive photo-paper. The resulting image is merely a trace of this event. In a more painterly key, Cynthia Young's stunningly scarred black-and-white prints, as well as Diane Althoff's minimalist-inspired spectrums of color and text, immerse the viewer entirely within the image's embrace. There is no subject in these photographs. Instead, the prints emerge from contact with ephemeral substances such as light, pressure, and liquid. Pushing this atonement with nature to the limit, Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey cultivate grass-prints that return photography to a state akin to a naturally fading fossil; the print is subject to natural change and decomposition. Here, the organic emerges to nearly reclaim the image. In many ways , the works in Agitate resemble the process-oriented photography that emerged in the 1970s. At that time , photographers stained, stitched, and stretched the light-sensitive emul-sion. Yet there are significant differences . Today, technological advances have altered the status of the photographic such that it now appears in ways and forms that surpass previous definitions. In other words, photography itself is in a state of becoming, existing as but one component within an ever-expanding flow of new media and digital information. As Arjun Appadurai notes, this event has created new forms as well as "new resources and new disciplines for the construction of imag-ined selves and imagined worlds." ' In Agitate the artists aggressively rework the photographic apparatus with an eye to the hybrid possibilities that exist within today 's media-satu-rated environment. Jean-Philippe Baert, for example, turns the gallery/theater into a dark-room, creating what he calls a "TV imprint" or "image fossil" by passing a monitor in front of photographic paper and developing the image as 14 VOLUM E 30, No. 1 SPRING / S UM MER 2003 part of his live performance. Baert's work, influ-enced by nineteenth-century scientific experiments, as well as 1960s happenings , expands the very idea of process photography and, at the same time, interrogates the fluidity of the medium as it now exists. Although there is no longer an authentic live performance, neither is there a pristine photograph' At the same time that such works display a pro-nounced fluency between the photographic, the performative, the tete-visual, and the digital, this is not without a certain frisson . As interventions , the works disclose a prior loss residing within photography itself. When this loss is allowed to surface, the relationship between the photographic and the nonhuman no longer appears seamless or innocent. Rather, the animal rubs up and disturbs the morbid stasis of the print while the organic returns as the basis upon which the image rests. The minerals separate from the paper; the lens reverts back to the eye. Why is this aspect of pho-tography emerging now? Does this neo-vitalism have anything to do with the eroding natural envi-ronment, the proliferation of global media, or the prosthetic body? Agitate stages a dialogue between the works to provoke such questions, hopefully revealing aspects of the medium that might otherwise lie dormant. Furthermore, instead of seeking to con-tain the reverberations, which the works initiate, this exhibit opens out onto further discovery. For instance, lecture, performance, and film events are being held at Camerawork's gallery in conjunction with the exhibit in order to add another dimension to the still photographs. And this issue of Camera-work features three highly original essays that link photography to memory, performance, politics, and gender while the accompanying CD-ROM includes artist interviews, images, and video clips. Clearly Agitate is an exhibit that , like a swelling river, overflows its banks. This is in keeping with the work. Although there is no consensus , these works gesture toward a photography that allows the running stream to destroy the picture in which it occurs, a photography that is not content to sharpen the pencil of nature, even for humanitarian goals. In this refusal of stasis and clarity, the works hark back to photography's early struggle to master "the elements ." Yet today these elements exit the darkroom and enter the gallery through the front door. • Dore Bowen is co-curator of Agitate and co-editor of this 1ssue of Camera work ABOVE Jean-Phillppe Baert, stills from a Jive performance of Empremtes numeriques or Happening· I-MAC/Web at Ma1son Populaue de Montreml, France; February 1, 2002. LEFT Cynthia Young, Untitled 1997, from Castmg; gelatin silver print, 42 x 42" RIGHT Ann Hamilton, making of a face to face portrait. still from the Art21 doc-umentary. Courtesy of Art21, c 2001 by Art21, Inc. All rights reserved ABOVE LEFT Carlos Motta, A Tree is a Tree IS not a Tree, detail #9 of installation in process, 2001. ABOVE RIGHT Carlos Motta, Untitled {Tree 1118). from the series A Tree IS a Tree is not a Tree, 2001, rain and tree bark on unfiXed color photo paper, 5 x 7" LEFT Diane Althoff, studio mstallatwn VIew (left to right), German Expres-siOnism, Auto· bwgraphy 1, 2, 3, 4, 2002/2003; chro-mogenic prints unmounted, vari-able height up tO 146 X 30 X 5". Photograph by Alex Sutton. 

Photography in the Mix: Flora-Fauna-Photo

San Jose State University

San Jose State University
SJSU ScholarWorks
Faculty Publications Art and Art History & Design Departments
January 2003
Photography in the Mix: Flora-Fauna-Photo
Dore Bowen
San Jose State University, dore.bowen@sjsu.edu
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/artdesign_pub
Part of the Contemporary Art Commons, and the Photography Commons
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Art and Art History & Design Departments at SJSU ScholarWorks. It has been accepted
for inclusion in Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of SJSU ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact
scholarworks@sjsu.edu.
Recommended Citation
Dore Bowen. "Photography in the Mix: Flora-Fauna-Photo" Camerawork: A Journal of Photographic Arts (2003): 12-15.
Photography in the Mix: 
FLORA-FAUNA-PHOTO 
Although photography changes 
with the times, it carries its history 
With it. This history is not innocent. "Power," writes 
Geoffrey Batchen, "inhabits the very grain of 
BY DORE BOWEN photography's existence."' The authority that 
photography wields is based on a Cartesian con-
ceit, a mental distancing built into the primary 
establishing feature of the medium-perspective. 
Only such visual distancing allows for a "view"-
a visual point organized around the eye of a 
monocular observer looking out upon the world as 
if onto a flat surface. The camera is a site for such 
outward exploration and inward rumination. Yet , 
the inarticulate presence of nature haunts this 
ocularcentric teleology. 
As Akira Mizuta Lippit suggests , photography 
can be understood as a "mourning apparatus " for 
those life forms that it kills off. ' While the history 
of photography involves documenting the disap-
pearance of nature and animal life, it is , at the 
same time, the very condition that brings this 
death into being. For instance, the camera/lens 
apparatus is reported to have been realized 
when, in 1619, German scientist Christoph 
Scheiner scraped the sclera from the eye of an 
ox, which he then placed in a hole in a shutter.' 
This .story persists because it holds a mythical if 
not factual truth: photography is founded on the 
transformation of "nonhuman" elements-both 
flora and fauna-into the photographic. Quite 
literally, photographic print emulsion is ground 
from animal bones (and, in the early days, egg 
whites) , the paper base is derived from trees, 
and the metals , such as silver and palladium, 
are mined from the earth. While photography 
continues to be used extensively to picture 
wildlife, these elements lie latent, but negated, 
within the process itself. 
12 VO LUME 30, No .1 SP RIN G/ SU MMER 2003 
The works in Agitate: Negotiating the Photo-
graphic Process allow this sacrifice to trouble the 
seemingly smooth surface of the print . This tension 
is ignited by Marco Breuer, an artist who creates 
an arena in which he compulsively struggles with 
his materials. Having used, at times, a hot-glue 
gun, sparklers, a sander, and his own blood, Breuer 
dramatizes photography's mastery of nature by 
forcing color to the surface of the paper. Less violent 
but no less determined, Kate Farra!! pursues shafts 
of undomesticated light that leak into the sealed 
darkroom. Staging the darkroom as a site of perme-
ability, Farrall's installation encourages the viewer 
to gaze with the eyes of a beast-that is, down on 
all fours-in order to locate signs of life outside the 
black box. Seeking irregularity within the apparatus , 
Roger Newton encourages visual aberrations by 
creating his own lenses constructed of glass , oils, 
and (in one experiment) fish eyes. Since the lens 
structures knowledge and perception, Newton's 
altered lenses guide the viewer's eye elsewhere. 
This desire to stretch the limits of the photographic 
apparatus is furthered by Ann Hamilton, who, in 
her face to face series, discloses her own animality. 
By placing a pinhole camera in her mouth, Hamilton 
deprivileges the enlightened eye, emphasizing the 
less subdued orifice instead. Through this shift from 
eye to mouth, Hamilton introduces an alien element, 
what Lippit calls "the magnetic animal, " into her 
photographic transference. 5 
Other artists in this exhibit engage with the 
plant life that underwrites photography by aban-
doning the mediating lens altogether. For example, 
Binh Danh's prints are singularly direct experi-
ments with light and chlorophyll. The process , 
however, is deceptively complex. Working with 
.EFT William Henry Fox Talbot. 
The Hay~t ck 1844 45 Courtesy 
of ~~cock Abbey Co!lect10n 
-llG T Heather Ackroyd and 
Dan Harvey. The Other S1de 
(L'Altro Law) 990. Presented by 
.abcr or 0 A "lf!:to Bussana 
Vee _ ltaJv Ackr~yc. c. Harvey 
crEatEd an Jrter or" illll\l sp ce 
by g:-owmg IJ!'lS< 0r •he waL '>f 
the room A yeJ.:ow shadow • f> 
by a ladder c n one of the w; us 
pr'>TdE'd •he mspiratJon to c eate 
photvwa~. s m gr s 
Roger Newton UntJ'I€"1, 997 
~ .at SJ!V p mt 20 X 40 
NOTES 
1 Ouoted m V1ck1 GGldberg, ed 
Photogruphy ·~ Pnnt Wntmgs 
frorr 1816 '?the Present 
!Albuquerque University of New 
MeXICO Press 1981), 56. The 
anopymou '84. article evaluates 
•he new photc,yraph1c ar• m 
gene1w, at.o hE daguerrE otyp• 
a· d ralotype processes 1r part1c 
... uar. 
2. Geoffrey Batchen, Bummg 
With De8II£ TliE Conceptwn of 
Photography iC<.,nbndge MA 
MI"" Pr ss 1 197 202 
3. Ak,ra M1zuta L1pp1t, Electnc 
AmmaJ Toward a Rhetonc of 
Wilclllfe (Mmneapolls Umversity 
of Minnesota Press. 2000), 188. 
Lippit is speaking specifically of 
the figure of the ammal. I have 
extendec. h1. argument to plant 
,Je as wei: 
4. Some have attributed th1s apoc-
ryphal tale to Rene Descartes 
5. Lippit, Electric Animal. 166 
Lipp1t explams that the f1gure of 
the ammal >perates as a foreign 
presence tuat seeps mto d!ld 
transforms • he language of 
which it is a part. 'The animal 
is magnetic because it draws the 
world-building subject toward 
an impossible convergence With 
the Lmits of world." Lippit con 
eludes. followmg philosophers 
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, 
that "all 'becommgs' are ammal 
becommgs. · 
6. Interview With Binh Da~h by 
Dav1d PacE December 2002. See 
the CD-F<.OM acrompanymg this 
Issue 
7 Af]Un Appadurql. Modernity 
at Large Cultural Dimensions 
of Globalizatwn (Minneapolis 
Umvers •y Jl Mmnesota Press, 
1996) 3 
8. Ph1ltp Auslander wntes that 
the mcreasmg des1re for ' live 
performance ' Ignores the fact 
th<'t today perf >rmance ex1sts 
w1thm thE sw·•y of media culture. 
Far frcm t emg encroached 
upon. contammated, or threat 
ened by med1at10n, live perform-
ance IS always already inscribed 
w1th trace. of the poss1b1llty of 
techmcal med1at1on (i.e. mediat1 
zutwn) that defmes it as hve." 
Philip Au. lander Liveness 
Performance m a Mediatized 
Culture (London and New York 
Routledge 1999). 53 
both digital files and the photocopy process, Danh 
creates a negative which he then places on the 
surface of a leaf for an indefinite amount of time ; 
it may take up to a month for the image to 
emerge. This organic/mechanical process is rooted 
in Danh's desire to link the scientific quest for 
knowledge to the unhurried and circular tempo 
of organic processes. Danh explains the quotidian 
metaphysics that compel him to print planetary 
imagery on yard leaves when he states that 
"instead of searching for the stars by looking up, 
we can look down." ' 
In a similar vein, Carlos Motta stages this rela-
tionship between photography and nature as a 
communion between a tree and light-sensitive 
photo-paper. The resulting image is merely a trace 
of this event. In a more painterly key, Cynthia 
Young's stunningly scarred black-and-white 
prints, as well as Diane Althoff's minimalist-
inspired spectrums of color and text, immerse 
the viewer entirely within the image's embrace. 
There is no subject in these photographs. Instead, 
the prints emerge from contact with ephemeral 
substances such as light, pressure, and liquid. 
Pushing this atonement with nature to the limit, 
Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey cultivate grass-
prints that return photography to a state akin 
to a naturally fading fossil; the print is subject 
to natural change and decomposition. Here, the 
organic emerges to nearly reclaim the image. 
In many ways , the works in Agitate resemble 
the process-oriented photography that emerged 
in the 1970s. At that time , photographers stained, 
stitched, and stretched the light-sensitive emul-
sion. Yet there are significant differences . Today, 
technological advances have altered the status 
of the photographic such that it now appears in 
ways and forms that surpass previous definitions. 
In other words, photography itself is in a state of 
becoming, existing as but one component within 
an ever-expanding flow of new media and digital 
information. As Arjun Appadurai notes, this event 
has created new forms as well as "new resources 
and new disciplines for the construction of imag-
ined selves and imagined worlds." ' 
In Agitate the artists aggressively rework the 
photographic apparatus with an eye to the hybrid 
possibilities that exist within today 's media-satu-
rated environment. Jean-Philippe Baert, for 
example, turns the gallery/theater into a dark-
room, creating what he calls a "TV imprint" or 
"image fossil" by passing a monitor in front of 
photographic paper and developing the image as 
14 VOLUM E 30, No. 1 SPRING / S UM MER 2003 
part of his live performance. Baert's work, influ-
enced by nineteenth-century scientific experiments, 
as well as 1960s happenings , expands the very 
idea of process photography and, at the same 
time, interrogates the fluidity of the medium as 
it now exists. Although there is no longer an 
authentic live performance, neither is there a 
pristine photograph' 
At the same time that such works display a pro-
nounced fluency between the photographic, the 
performative, the tete-visual, and the digital, this 
is not without a certain frisson . As interventions , 
the works disclose a prior loss residing within 
photography itself. When this loss is allowed to 
surface, the relationship between the photographic 
and the nonhuman no longer appears seamless or 
innocent. Rather, the animal rubs up and disturbs 
the morbid stasis of the print while the organic 
returns as the basis upon which the image rests. 
The minerals separate from the paper; the lens 
reverts back to the eye. Why is this aspect of pho-
tography emerging now? Does this neo-vitalism 
have anything to do with the eroding natural envi-
ronment, the proliferation of global media, or the 
prosthetic body? 
Agitate stages a dialogue between the works 
to provoke such questions, hopefully revealing 
aspects of the medium that might otherwise lie 
dormant. Furthermore, instead of seeking to con-
tain the reverberations, which the works initiate, 
this exhibit opens out onto further discovery. For 
instance, lecture, performance, and film events are 
being held at Camerawork's gallery in conjunction 
with the exhibit in order to add another dimension 
to the still photographs. And this issue of Camera-
work features three highly original essays that link 
photography to memory, performance, politics, and 
gender while the accompanying CD-ROM includes 
artist interviews, images, and video clips. 
Clearly Agitate is an exhibit that , like a swelling 
river, overflows its banks. This is in keeping with 
the work. Although there is no consensus , these 
works gesture toward a photography that allows 
the running stream to destroy the picture in which 
it occurs, a photography that is not content to 
sharpen the pencil of nature, even for humanitarian 
goals. In this refusal of stasis and clarity, the 
works hark back to photography's early struggle 
to master "the elements ." Yet today these 
elements exit the darkroom and enter the gallery 
through the front door. • 
Dore Bowen is co-curator of Agitate and co-editor of 
this 1ssue of Camera work 
ABOVE 
Jean-Phillppe 
Baert, stills from 
a Jive performance 
of Empremtes 
numeriques or 
Happening· 
I-MAC/Web at 
Ma1son Populaue 
de Montreml, 
France; February 1, 
2002. 
LEFT 
Cynthia Young, 
Untitled 1997, from 
Castmg; gelatin 
silver print, 42 x 42" 
RIGHT 
Ann Hamilton, 
making of a face to 
face portrait. still 
from the Art21 doc-
umentary. Courtesy 
of Art21, c 2001 by 
Art21, Inc. All rights 
reserved 
ABOVE LEFT 
Carlos Motta, 
A Tree is a Tree IS 
not a Tree, detail #9 
of installation in 
process, 2001. 
ABOVE RIGHT 
Carlos Motta, 
Untitled {Tree 1118). 
from the series A 
Tree IS a Tree is not 
a Tree, 2001, rain 
and tree bark on 
unfiXed color photo 
paper, 5 x 7" 
LEFT 
Diane Althoff, 
studio mstallatwn 
VIew (left to right), 
German Expres-
siOnism, Auto· 
bwgraphy 1, 2, 3, 4, 
2002/2003; chro-
mogenic prints 
unmounted, vari-
able height up 
tO 146 X 30 X 5". 
Photograph by 
Alex Sutton. 


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Photography in the Mix: Flora-Fauna-Photo

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