Unconscious self-revelation

Normally I value ambiguity, especially when it’s inadvertent. Snapshots are very good here. But the strength of this picture comes from something the subjects and the photographer have inadvertently made unmistakable. It’s clear to begin with that the unseen person behind the lens and the group on the right together form a single party, to which the woman on the left does not belong. All five white people—the four white subjects and, we are sure, the photographer—are intruding into the world of the Black subject. But they’re uneasy: the four we can see have found a delicately calibrated distance from the Black field worker, a distance that means “she’s why we’re here, but we’re not with her,” and they’ve drawn into a defensive clump so tight that they seem to be practically clutching one another. Though the Black subject is the occasion of the photo, at the same time she is not permitted to be fully in it and remains a blank, a cipher. A sightline between her and anyone else wouldn’t belong in the shot, for example; we almost feel that would be a taboo element. In the end the picture isn’t really about her, of course, even if it would make no sense without her presence. This is a portrait of, by, and for white people. It’s a kind of ultra-callous tourist selfie, in which a person depersonalized as far as possible plays the part of Mount Rushmore or a San Francisco cable car. Try to imagine a similar picture with a white miner or machinist in her place. Yes, it’s a horrifying picture. And it’s not a “clean” horror. The point of view leaves the viewer no choice but to identify with the photographer: the web of relationships among the white subjects implicates us too, so that we can’t free ourselves to make contact with the Black subject no matter how much we want to. The horror will be especially vivid to Americans, perhaps, because that implication is putting some pressure on a spot that’s already sore. Suppose a similar situation could have been photographed while slavery still existed. Would such a picture make a different impression on us now? I think the white people would look less abashed, and also less confused—clearer in their own minds about their roles both in life and in the shot. Here the people seem to know something’s wrong, but their awareness stops there. They have no clue what they’re showing us about themselves, which includes the very dimness of their perceptions. So it seems to me the photo is even harder to look at than it might be otherwise, because we have to feel sorry for these people on top of just having a low opinion of them. Certainly it becomes harder to look at when we realize it was taken only in the 1960s: its world is a world some of us can still remember. Not only do any excuses we might dream up become that much feebler, but we ourselves are that much closer to being part of the picture. This is of course a snapshot, not a professional photo. We assume that it is unself-conscious: that no one was trying to do anything but record a moment for private purposes, that it is therefore as honest as a photo can be. So the picture has a power that a “concerned photographer” actively trying to portray racism—a Salgado, a Parks, a Lange—could never achieve. It is the thing itself, not just a picture of it. It is actually enacting what another kind of photo could only point to. Since its effect is ultimately dependent on a radical naiveté that could not have produced an art photo, this picture could only be a snapshot. I am presenting the photo as mine—as a found photo—as much as any of the others on this blog. I’ve said I take a dim view of irony, and that’s not what this is: the picture is too strong for an ironic interpretation, and it even goes somewhat beyond political criticism. It is, in fact, cruel, because I am pointing out that all but one of the people connected with the shot very plainly do not know something, something terrible, that we do know. But I think the cruelty is salutary. The fact that I want the photo to show what it shows, and aesthetically approve of its inadvertent way of doing it, is what makes it mine. A final point about found photos, as distinguished from snapshots. This picture is undeniably powerful, so powerful that there’s really only one way to look at it. In reading it the way it forces us to read it, we have no choice but to “take advantage” of something the subjects and the snapshooter didn’t know about. That is: when this picture works on us as a photo, we are necessarily taking it as a found photo in the technical sense. If we are in any way skeptical of foundness, this photo teaches us not to be.

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