from Barthes to Hockney

The Intimate Toilet, Watteau 1715

Over the weekend I decided to read for no reason at all Roland Barthes Camera Lucida. Barthes final book the first part discusses the 'Punctum' i.e.focuses on a particularly detail in a picture, the stadium i.e. liking, having a interest in a picture and stigmatum i.e. time the second part contemplates a photograph of his late mother as a child and reflections on photography.
I then decided to read again Susan Sontags writings on 'On photography' that is her piece on Diane Arbus (one of my favourite photograpers) p13 Arbus said 'i always thought of of photograhy as a naughty thing to do -that was on of my favourite things about it'...sontag states that there needs to be a distant between photographer and subject...'the camera doesn't rape, or even posses, though it may presume, intrude, trespass, distort, exloit, and, at the farthest reach of metaphor, assassinate-all sexual activities that, unlike the sexual push and shove, can be conducted from a distance, and with detachment'...this is important as it relates back to previous posting where I have discussed the apparatus theory (Hilary Lloyd) Jean Baudry..the whole idea of 'interpassivity' of delegation to that object Robert Pfaller and Warhols 'Sleep' where (Koch 1991 p40) 'we gaze at so voyeuristically, bound to the unchanging clock of the camera's mechanical eye'.

The last book I looked at over the weekend was Hockneys 'thats the way I see it'..there is a chapter I wish to refer to here, Chapter 3 'Seeing the new' p102 is of interest and what I have used as a good example when exlaining to students hockneys key hole theory...in the Watteau painting illustrated above The Intimate Toliet you are seen as the voyeur, that is we view the scence from the outside. The picasso painting, Femme we are inside the the picture, we reach over and are able to view all sides of the figure, this connects to arbus's statement of feeling perverse. For Warhol distance was imporatant..the lovers (p 43) are close up on the screen, but the audience sit at a distance, all the while the noise of the projector is chattering away behind, that is, the delegated apparatus, reminding (p39) the audience's participation is never allowed to fall into another slot of that other temporal existence???  



Picasso Femme couchee 1932

Finally I was on the verge of giving up on sunday (12th Feb) writing in journal proved difficult, questioning myself why was I reading all this stuff..'how' does it connect to current research, importantly does it contribute to new knowledge..actually do I care (enjoying it anyway!) is it neccesary to be so fixed and settled?? Hockney discusses the 'how' and 'what' and that 'how' oftern effects 'what' we see...ok how do I see current practice developing, rather than what..umm

I began reading mcniff and white Action Research yesterday afternoon..just a couple of pages, what caught my interest and what I lay awake think about last night was 'onotological' persectives (the theory of being) from a researchers perspective of 'how' they see themselves and on others and the environment...on the other side is to consider social science where observations are made from the outside looking in...Ive always thought of myself as that person who sees the world as a seperate thing that Im not actually part of it???, so is this how I see my reasearch in the same way as I see the cinema screen, television, the lens...I shall leave it there to think again..