art and allusion

Appearances - Notes from Session 3 - Tate Modern

The theme of this week's session of Appearances was Ethics: specifically some of the ethical issues that arise when taking photographs of people in the street. Ethics is largely a matter of how we treat other people (and, to a certain extent, the kind of person that each of us chooses to become). The point of this session was to raise questions rather than to give a definitive answer to those questions.

Ethical issues arise in the act of taking a photograph of someone who doesn't want to be photographed. Although in many parts of the world it is legal to photograph someone in these circumstances, it clearly causes some people distress. In extreme cases, it can be tantamount to stalking someone (the paparazzi syndrome). A photographer might argue that no one is seriously harmed in the process and that if people are in a public place they are fair game (and even that there is tacit consent to be photographed by entering the public space of the street). In Street and Studio in Tate Modern the sequence of images in Room 2, taken on the street in Hong Kong by Ed van der Elsken seems to border on harassment if we are to believe the caption saying that the photographer just followed a 'babe' around for a bit photographing her even though she didn't want him to.

The subsequent use of an image is also important. If I walk down Oxford Street and someone tracks my progress on a surveillance camera, that is very different from a photographer takes my photograph (perhaps in an unflattering way) and puts my image in an exhibition or prints it in a magazine or newspaper. In Tate Modern, the Philip-Lorca diCorcia images from the 'Heads' (review) series taken using a telephoto lens in Times Square from 1999 - 2001 are of people who did not know what was happening. They had no idea that they had been photographed. Their images have then appeared in public places (including a book and now Tate Modern) and at least one of the subjects has tried (and failed) to mount a legal case about this use on grounds of privacy. diCorcia's defence was based on the First Amendment right to free expression (the case was dismissed on the grounds that there was too long a gap between the act of taking the photograph and the complaint : read a New York Times article about the case and another in the American Journalism Review).

In these two examples above, a Kantian approach to ethics might suggest that the photographer's actions were immoral. For Immanuel Kant, the Categorical Imperative, the basic rule of ethics is that you should treat people as ends in themselves, respect their autonomy, rather than treat them as means to an end. Ed van der Elsken treated the woman as a simple means to get a photograph rather than acknowledged her as someone with her own desires and wishes; diCorcia seems not to be unduly concerned with the individuals' feelings about how their images are to be used - for him his right to free expression as an artist/photographer is the issue.

A consequentialist might point out that any harm done in these cases is minimal (though in the Van E case, they experience of being pursued could be psychologically traumatic) and the benefit in terms of producing interesting street photographs, large. So cost/benefit analysis would suggest that the photographer was justified in his approach in each case.

Less straightforward is the example of Boris Mikhailov.[read an interesting piece from the Guardian about him, and also an interview with him]  His photographs of people on the margins of Ukrainian society are disturbing documentary images. In some cases he has observed and photographed, and his actions are justified by the way in which he makes visible something that many people would rather not see. In this respect he is completely within the mainstream tradition of photojournalism. But at the point where he pays subjects to expose themselves for his camera he enters another domain. Here he is deliberately challenging our views about morality. These people are so destitute that very little sense of dignity is left to them, and Mikhailov demonstrates this by showing how readily they will further humiliate themselves for money. At first glance this appears a highly immoral act of exploitation of the vulnerable for the sake of a shocking image. A response to this view, though, is that there is a kind of  'tu quoque' move going on here, because in his commercial interaction and humiliation of his subjects he is simply mirroring economic relations that all of us are implicated in. He is perhaps saying 'You are no better than me'. Yet, even on this interpretation, it could be argued that as he has genuinely and knowingly further humiliated the downtrodden, he has done something seriously immoral to make a moral point, and that is not acceptable.

The neutral presentation of his highly challenging style of documentary photography in Tate Modern is unfortunate: most viewers need some background information about the circumstances in which these images were made to get a grip of what the moral issues might be here, and why they are actually an aspect of his approach to photography.

If you are interested in getting an overview of three distinct approaches to ethics, listen to these podcasts:

On Aristotle's Ethics

On Kant's Ethics

On John Stuart Mill's Ethics
Roger Crisp on Utilitarianism
Brad Hooker on Consequentialism

Appearances - Notes from Session Two, Tate Modern Course

The main theme of this week's session of the Tate Modern course Appearances: Philosophy, Photography and the Self, was the way in which our imagination plays a significant role in interpreting and appreciating street photography.

When I look at a photograph of someone I know, my mind is taken beyond the photograph to that actual person and what I know about them. The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wrote about this in his book called The Imaginary. In his example, he sees first of all a photo; then he sees it is a photo of a man on the some steps; then he appreciates it is a photo of his friend Pierre. At this point his mind is taken beyond the photograph. His thoughts are about the man he knows: Pierre.

In contrast, when I look at a photograph of a complete stranger, as is often the case with street photography, all I have to go on is the appearance of that stranger, and the minimal information contained in a caption if there is one. The rest is down to my imagination. Not that my imagination is completely free and unconstrained here, rather it is tied to what I can plausibly see within the image. This is a like the duck-rabbit case that Wittgenstein used to introduce his concept of seeing-as. I can choose to interpret the picture in a particular way, provided that the interpretation is consistent with the highly ambiguous information contained in the picture.

Whilst it is true that photographs carry  factual information about their causes, this is rarely legible and highly open to manipulation by the photographer and other users of the image. Even with a straight photograph of a street scene, such as David Goldblatt's On Elof Street, Johannesburg, South Africa 1966-7, in Room 8 of the Street and Studio exhibition, the legible documentary information cannot be the source of our main interest in it since it is so minimal. We can recognize that there are children, adults, that some are black and some are white, and that they appear to be going somewhere, but little more. The caption tells us that we are in South Africa and the date that this is the era of apartheid. But even the facial expressions of those depicted may not be accurate about how they would have appeared over a period of a few seconds. The frozen instant can radically misinform us about what would have been easily legible had we witnessed the scene ourselves.

This is not to say that the photographs can never provide evidence about the past. A photo-finish image is fairly reliable evidence about which horse won the race. But that is in part because of knowledge about the circumstances in which the photograph was taken, but also because the information carried by the image is of a relatively simple and unambiguous type.

It is true that in ordinary life we frequently judge a person's character on the basis of a fleeting glimpse of their face. But in such cases we usually have a great deal of information about the context and location of what is going on. And it is rare for a fleeting glimpse to be as brief as 1/250 of the second. So we glean information about someone from changes taking place over time. With a single still image, particularly if it is in black and white, we have very little to go on. Consequently we use our imaginations to take us beyond the marks on the surface of the photographic paper. Street photography can be fascinating not principally because of what it shows us about reality so much as of a what it forces us to contribute as viewers of the images, what it suggests rather than demonstrates. This is not untethered fantasy about the lives of others, but rather a matter of filling in thoughts about what seems to be implied by the image, but yet might not be accurate about what was in front of the lens when the photograph was taken.

In other words, we are not simply passive interpreters of images whose meanings have been fixed by the moment of exposure, but rather active creators of their meanings to some extent. This differs considerably from our experience of images of, for example, famous people. When I look at a photograph of Mick Jagger, even though I've never seen him in the flesh, I recognized him instantly. My thoughts are taken far beyond the image to a man whose music I have heard, whom I have seen interviewed on television, and in Robert Frank's film. Although what I believe about Mick Jagger and his life may be misleading about the real man, I am not the one who is inventing the character that I believe to have been photographed. Whereas with a photograph of a complete stranger in the street I have to base my thoughts about who this person is and what they were doing and why almost entirely on non-specific quite general experience. The contrast is even more extreme if you think about a photograph of your child or lover. Here, although you see the photograph, I think Sartre is right when he suggests that we are typically transported in our thoughts to the person him or herself. In the language of philosophy, the phenomenology of looking at photographs of those we know, of those we recognize, and of those who are complete strangers to us, is very different.

Appearances: Philosophy, Photography and the Self - Tate Modern - Aims of the Course

Appearances: Philosophy, Photography and the Self
led by Nigel Warburton

Mondays 2nd June – 23rd June,  6.45 p.m. – 8.15 p.m. followed by  optional drinks till about 9 p.m. (4 Sessions) Tate Modern (booking required - course sold out)

Course Description

Aims of the Course

•    To explore a range of philosophical ideas about the self and photography
•    To think about and discuss these ideas in relation to photographs in the Street and Studio exhibition
•    To gain new insights into particular photographs in this exhibition

No prior knowledge of philosophy or the history of photography assumed.

The main themes of the course are:

Appearance and Reality
The Self
Photography’s relation to reality, truth and the imagination
The Ethics of Photographing People
The Power of Photographic Portraiture

Notes, ideas for further reading etc.
I will provide a brief summary with links and ideas for reading after each session and will post it on this weblog.

Forthcoming Course on Photography at Tate Modern

Coming soon...

Appearances: philosophy, photography and the self

A 4-session course at Tate Modern

Led by Nigel Warburton, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, The Open University
2nd, 9th, 16th, 23rd  June 2008
6.45 p.m. - 8.15 p.m. followed by drinks.

What is the self? Is this something that photographs can reveal? Or is photographic portraiture merely an art of appearances? To what extent does the alleged documentary nature of photography affect our understanding of what we see?

In this 4-session course, led by philosopher and writer Nigel Warburton, participants will explore philosophical ideas about photography and the self. Sessions will include discussion of thinkers as diverse as Jean-Paul Sartre, Walter Benjamin, Susan Sontag, Erving Goffman, Roger Scruton and Kendall Walton. There will be opportunities for critical engagement with specific works as well as discussion of more general theoretical approaches.

Booking from early May on the Tate Modern website. These courses are usually oversubscribed, so book early if you want to come. The course will coincide with the Street and Studio exhibition.

(Read a review of Max Kozloff's new book on photographic portraiture, The Theatre of the Face)

Interview: Sadie Murdoch on her Self-Portrait as Charlotte Perriand

Sadie Murdoch's self-portrait as Charlotte Perriand has been on show in Leeds at the Henry Moore Institute. It was the subject of an interview on BBC Radio 4's Womans' Hour (I contributed to that discussion):  you can listen to this here.

In an interview for this weblog Sadie explains why she took a colour photograph of herself in in black and white clothes wearing black and white make-up reclining on a famous modernist chaise longue...

click on this image to enlarge it...

Could you describe how you came to make this self-portrait as Charlotte Perriand?

It began with a conversation with Penelope Curtis, curator at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds. Penelope was in the process of thinking about the exhibition "Figuring Space" (18 Feb - 1 April 2007) at the Institute, which explores the role of sculpture in the work of architect Mies van der Rohe. In an overlapping project in Gallery 4, Penelope planned to address the way in which Modernism frames and presents the gendered body. Together we discussed the possibility of an exhibition of photographic prints in which I would re-stage a photograph of Charlotte Perriand and her iconic piece of modernist design, the Chaise Longue.

I was attracted to the image of Perriand on the Chaise Longue in that it seemed to break with a number of conventions of the promotional photograph.

Firstly, given Perriand's presence in the photograph, as model and as co-author (she collaborated on the design of the Chaise, along with the architect and designer Le Corbusier and his cousin Pierre Jenneret), she is also curiously absent. Her head turns away from the viewer to face the wall, and her physical presence seems to merely demonstrate use. It is one of a series of similar photographs, and in each case, Perriand is anonymous. In two of the images, her signature chromed ball bearing necklace hints at her identity. Perriand also staged and lit the photograph, so whilst it could be read as a self portrait, it is also just an 'ad'.

Then, there is a sense in which the image creates an unstable representation of gender; Perriand's hair is cut à la garçon, and yet she reclines in a highly feminine manner, legs crossed on the chaise, her skirt draped langorously across the chrome bars. Even the pose itself becomes a type of prop. The Chaise itself and the chromed ball bearing necklace are also both 'male' and 'female'. 

Lastly, the shadow cast by Perriand's form and the reclining position of the Chaise Longue seem to point to a kind of 'inbetweenness', a psychological and visual ambiguity. Most photographic documentation of furniture from the 1920s and 1930s is evenly illuminated, neutral, almost graphic. In this image, the shadow looms spectrally, larger than Perriand herself, and hints at an empty space, an index of Perriand's presence as well as her absence. The shadow also creates a figure/ground ambiguity, penumbral zones within the image which blur the borders between positive and negative space, somehow attaching the figure of Perriand to the wall.

This unfixed status is integral to the design of the chair itself. The sliding system of the Chaise permits a range of seating positions, from casually upright to reclining. It generally permits the sitter to be both alert, yet relaxed. It is actually a really great chair to read in, precisely for this reason; the mind can wander, but ultimately remain focussed. It struck me, looking at this picture, that Modernism occupies a point between positivist utilitarianism and a set of ideas and practices that may not be strictly rational - idealism, utopianism, megalomania etc. So the Chaise itself is a nice visual analogy.

And just as the occupant of the chaise is suspended, between dreaming and waking, my remake of the image in 'Modelling Charlotte Perriand' is not 'fixed'. The image itself shuttles back and forth between black and white and colour, the original and its interpretation, Perriand's body and my own. The spatial ambiguity of the figure /ground relationship is also formally elaborated in my photograph.

How did you create the image? Isnt it a bit perverse to use black and white make-up? Why not just manipulate the image digitally?

The two images in the exhibition, "Mirrored Photomontage" Part One and Part Two (2007), were taken using an SLR camera and colour negative film. I attempted to render everything within the frame black, white or grey, in order to create the illusion of a black and white photograph. But if you look at the images closely, certain things are not quite right. Colour 'leaks' into the image, from beneath the make-up, and from reflected sources outside the frame of the photograph. I applied make-up and dyed the clothing in order to match the overall grey hue of the backdrop, but inevitably there is error.

I view this re-staging as a type of translation or interpretation, which by its nature is never exact. The flaws are an important part of the work.

As part of this process of 'faking it', there is a performative element, which manifests itself materially in the way in which the make-up smudges, wipes off and soils the clothing and props. A trace of the process of making the work, it points not just to the process of physically constructing the image but also to the way in which we leave traces behind us when we use things. 

I could have used black and white film or manipulated the image digitally, but with both these approaches the flaws or faults would be invisible. I also wanted to go against the grain of the medium, to try and make a colour photograph do something that it wasn’t designed to do, that it sort of struggles to resist. Photography is quite a physical medium, liquid, like paint. Digital photography is too 'crunchy' and 'brittle' somehow. 

Why did you chose to focus on Perriand?

Perriand interested me because of her oft-perceived status as a footnote to the history of Le Corbusier. I also found her interesting in that her work was part of a larger social program intended to promote the pleasures of modernity. Though clearly not averse to the luxurious and to a high standard of living, Perriand also challenged bourgeois conventions and supported collective goals. In the years prior to WW II, she was closely affiliated with the Communist Party of France and worked on a number of projects for the Socialist Popular Front. She was committed to design as a means to facilitate the collective transformation of daily existence, and I find this deeply inspiring. 

It is hard to appreciate how radical this chaise-longue was at the time it was designed (1928)...

I think that it is hard to appreciate the radical break with 19th Century furniture design. With their chromed steel frames and lack of ornamentation, the Chaise, like Breuer's Wassily chair would have seemed the antithesis of comfortable domesticity.  Now these artefacts have achieved the status of icons of 'retro-chic' and are often appreciated more for their sculptural beauty than their functional brilliance. 

Modernist design design also broke with the tradition of gendered furniture. Yet the Chaise Longue, rather than being neutral in this respect, seems both masculine and feminine; the curves of the metal tube frame are sinuous and elegant, yet it's smart, functional simplicity suggests a masculine sitter. The various coverings, from black leather to pony-skin further complicate this message.

What about that ball-bearing necklace?

The chrome necklace as a decorative adornment made with objects used for engineering was both feminine accoutrement and a signifier of the masculine world of technology and machinery. It is an assertive embrace of pleasure and modernity; like Perriand's 'Bar in the Attic' (1927), it is a gesture of self affirmation. 

Do you feel Charlotte Perriand was eclipsed by Le Corbusier? Or was it just that she was much younger, somewhat in awe of him, and ultimately proud and delighted to be working as an effective associate of one of the most innovative architects of the century?

Perriand has always stated that Le Corbusier did not treat her differently because she was a woman, though history has not always been so kind. Many of the pieces she co-designed with Le Corbusier and Pierre Jenneret were often attributed simply to Le Corbusier.  Penny Sparke's book "Furniture", for instance, credits Le Corbusier solely for the design of the Grand Confort and the Chaise Longue. (1) [ NW adds:  This is probably a recent phenomenon - Perriand and Jeanneret are credited alongside Le Corbusier in Ginsburger's 1930  book Young French Architects]

Mary McLeod has described Perriand's anger at Beatriz Colomina's description of the photograph of the designer on the Chaise Longue. Colomina implies that the image was used by Le Corbusier to suggest Perriand's lack of authorship, and to deny her 'vision'; Perriand is "almost an attachment to the wall, she sees nothing" (2). Perriand has always insisted that she arranged the pose in order to emphasise the chair rather than herself, hoping to convey the idea that the Chaise Longue might be used by anyone. It is quite plausible that Perriand intended her body to be a means to demonstrate the use of the chaise, so it is in retrospect that we read this as a form of self-effacement.

An interesting parallel can be found in Erich Consemuller's 1926 photograph of the Wassily Chair. It is said to feature either Lise Beyer or Ise Gropius, wearing a stage mask by Oscar Schlemmer. The woman is anonymous. It is difficult to imagine a similarly arranged photograph of a male designer sitting on his own or someone else's chair. In another image of the Wassily chair, on the catalogue cover for Breuer's 'Metal Furniture' of 1927, designed by Herbert Bayer, the sitter (the same woman?) appears in photographic negative. The reversal of tone renders her facial features indistinguishable. It is as if, like Perriand, the sitter is somehow not 'in possession' of her own body. The use of the unidentified female figure has been a common feature in the promotion of design, from Breuer to Verner Panton, through to much advertising today. It reminds me of John Berger's assertion that the social presence of a woman is different to that of a man, as well as his pithy comment that "a photograph of an object is just an object, but with the addition of a female figure, that object is for sale".

In the last two decades Perriand's reputation has been thoroughly re-instated. Most recently, a major retrospective at the Pompidou Centre in Paris in 2006, the exhibition "Useful Forms: Furniture by Charlotte Perriand" at Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton NJ , 2004, and McLeod's monograph "Charlotte Perriand. An Art of Living" (2003) provide evidence of the growing recognition of Perriand's important place in the history of modernist design. (3)

Is this part of an on-going series?

"Modelling Charlotte Perriand" is consistent with a body of work that I have been working on since 2004, in which I am asking people to re-consider black and white photography as artifice rather than document. I am interested in how history becomes a representation; black and white photography, in documenting early Modernism in particular, has retrospectively been used to construct iconic moments and represent buildings and artefacts quite formally, as planes of light and shade, generally unused and uninhabited. The black and white photograph transforms a building into a monument, a chair or a tea strainer into a piece of sculpture.

Modernist design itself often 'resists' the body or the feminine, or becomes simply a way of containing and controlling it. Photographic documentation of interiors and exteriors of early modernist design and architecture rarely depict the figure or even provide evidence of habitation. The house/domestic environment thus troubles modernism; it is a place of dirt and disorder. It is also a place traditionally associated with women, and women become part of this subtext of containment.

Through a re-staging of real and imagined events, involving figures such as Eileen Gray, Le Corbusier Philip Johnson and Lilly Reich, my work interprets this history, building a visual vocabulary around the fault lines and counter-narratives that run through this movement.

History itself must be viewed as a form of translation, a consistently subjective and arbitrary interpretation of the past. I am interested in the personal relationships, political agendas, ideas of otherness, vernacular traditions etc. that run against the grain of orthodox histories of this area of art, architecture and design. I am proposing that Modernism was constructed precisely as a result of these counter-narratives, in order to contain and conceal them in some way. The materiality of Modernism is somehow evidence of this; much of my work recreates the steely reflective surfaces and empty white spaces characteristic of its buildings and designs. But these empty spaces and gleaming chrome surfaces 'invite' dirt and also become a surface on which to project, to hallucinate; steely reflections create penumbral spaces of deep ambiguity.

Rather than a nostalgia for modernism, for its confidence and certainty, the work concerns itself with the contradictory nature of this movement, and how these contradictions are built into the fabric of the present. Like a lot of artists, I'm interested in Modernism because of what I suppose we perceive as its lack of cynicism and irony. It seems like an impossible position from the perspective of today's political relativism and complacency. 

    

There is a lively strain of role-playing female self-portraiture, particularly in photography. Why do you think this is? Do you particularly identify with other artists working in this way?

Women artists have consistently used photographic means to explore identity and role playing as a part of a critical appraisal of the construction of femininity. From the 1920s to the present, artists such as Claude Cahun, Hannah Hoch, Lynda Benglis and of course Cindy Sherman have used photography or photomontage precisely because it invites a particular type of speculation about the self. Photography inaugurates what Celia Lury calls "the advent of myself as 'other'", where this form of image-making becomes disassociated from consciousness and memory, with embodiment creating other possible narratives for the physical self (4).

There is a theme of bodily extension and displacement running through Modernism - designers such as Gray and Perriand often used design as a form of prosthesis. An idea of an extension of the subject, beyond the self, can also be seen in the experimental photography of the 1920s and 1930s. The desire to present reformulated images of the self was part of a project to 'see the world anew' and released a type of visual and performative pleasure. The work of Marianne Brandt and Gertrude Arndt is interesting in this respect; two female members of the Bauhaus, they created ambiguous, enigmatic images of themselves and of a mutable femininity, which was interesting at a time when photography was used as a demonstrative assertion of presence and vocation.

I am also very interested in the tradition of the 'mirror' within self-portraiture in Bauhaus photography. The use of mirrors offers another 'reality', framed, duplicated but separate from the tangible world. I recently showed some photographs in a show at the Agency Gallery in London - 'Frauhaus'(4th April - 12th May 2007) - which took as a starting point the use of reflective surfaces to create distortion, repetition and spatial dislocation.

Do I identify with other artists working this way? Unlike artists such as Sherman, I'm not interested in revealing femininity as artifice, or engaging with the appearance of masquerade. This is well covered ground; I am interested in the interdependent relationship between photography and the disappearance of certain figures, key issues, awkward questions. I am interested in taking a photographic image and trying to follow, and undermine, its internal logic.

Thank you very much.

    Notes
    1. Sparke, Penny, Furniture (Bell and Hyman, 1986)

    2. Colomina, Beatriz ed. 'The Split Wall: Domestic Voyeurism' in Sexuality and Space (N.Y. Princeton Architectural Press, 1992).

    3. Prior to this Perriand had a retrospective at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris 1985, and at the Design Museum in London 1998.

    4. Lury, Celia, Prosthetic Culture. Photography, Memory and Identity (Routledge, 1998).

Interview with curator Susan Bright on Face of Fashion

Susan Bright, freelance curator of photography exhibitions and author of the highly successful book Art Photography Now discusses her new exhibition Face of  Fashion (15th Feb. - 28th May 2007) below...[update: Read Susan's interview about 'How We Are Photographing Britain', Tate Britain]

Links to information about the five photographers included.
Read the Press Release.
Hear Susan talking about the exhibition on 3rd March at the NPG, booking information here
Susan will also be discussing fashion photography with some of the key players on Friday 13th April in a Tate Modern study day 'When Fashion and Art Collide'.

Audio tour: download mp3s about the exhibition.
Screensaver: download Face of Fashion screensaver.
Information about the Exhibition Catalogue here or click on icon below.

Nigel: Face of Fashion at the National Portrait Gallery has more publicity before it has opened than some major exhibitions get altogether. Why do you think there is such fervid press interest here?

Susan: I think there are many reasons for it. There are five photographers, so there are five potential stories and takes on the subject; the photographers have good links with the magazines so  in turn publications are more likely to feature them;  the exhibition features celebrities which of course sell column inches and finally the NPG has an excellent press department with very good relations with the media. You are also probably noticing it more too as you know me. Hogarth has had a lot too!

Nigel: What is the main theme of the show?

Susan: There is no over-arching theme. Its not a survey but a glimpse at the work of 5 photographers, highlighting their  virtuosity as portraitists and the diversity of the genre within a commercial setting. I like what Philippe Garner wrote about it in PLUK.. “…Face of Fashion does not claim to be encyclopedic or even comprehensive. It feels, rather, like and intuitive and sensitive probing of the field and presents work of just a few photographers…but each in sufficient depth to underscore their individuality. The list is international; it is diverse, and it succeeds in demonstrating the very considerable shifts that have marked the world of fashion imagery since the early 1990s. Without the straightjacket of a self-conscious curatorial structure, the work is encouraged to speak for itself, and it successfully  puts forward some challenging ideas.”

Nigel: What is fashion portraiture?

Susan:  Portraiture that is done by photographers that work mainly in fashion and portraits that appear within fashion and lifestyle magazines. This can be advertising or editorial.

Nigel: Is it different from other kinds of celebrity portraiture?

Susan: Yes. There are many types of celebrity portraiture – publicity shots and grabbed paparazzi shots for the ‘red tops’ example. Here we are looking at the very best editorial and advertising shots of the famous.

Nigel: I do think there is something different about fashion portraiture, but am not quite sure what it is. Perhaps because many of the subjects are particulary good-looking there is less focus on character (if the subjects are famous they are famous for the way they look, so everything is on the surface). It might have something to do with portraiture created for the more ephemeral medium of the fashion magazine spread too...Do you have any thoughts about this?

Susan: I think a lot of portraiture in ‘art photography’ is about the photographic act. Subjects tend to be awkward and over self-conscious about the camera. This is what makes so much of it strong. I am most obviously thinking of Rineke Djkstra here…In fashion portraiture they have been commissioned. The models or actors are very used to being photographed and are acting. It's their job to be photographed so the photographic act is totally taken for granted on some levels. They know what to do.

Models are like silent movie stars. Tilda Swinton wrote very eloquently in the handlist about being photographed by Paolo and how to move so not to appear frozen. She totally gets how to move, how to react. Production values are much higher too in commercial portraiture and don’t forget sitters will have been styled and made up. Also post production is much more rigorous and we only see the ones that make it to the final edit.

Nigel: In your book Art Photography Now (p.13) , writing about photographic portraiture, you asked, rhetorically, 'Is it all about  surface appearance or can it communicate something more?' Are you prepared to answer this question in relation to Face of Fashion?

Susan: I think its all about the surface. Portraiture is about role playing, performance, posing. Corinne’s work comes closest to showing more about the presence of her models but they are still aware of the camera.

Nigel: How did you select the five photographers?

Susan:  I was limited by space. The NPG is a modest museum. I wanted 5 different sets of work so that I could show a good amount of photographs rather than just three or four by more photographers. I wanted to show how each photographer approach portraiture in very different ways. However, it was important  in the selection to illustrate that what links them together is that they all form very close collaborations with the sitter. All the photographers deal with intimacy on some level although they do this in very different ways. Their relationship with their sitters comes from empathy and respect. There is not any cruelty in their work. I am not condemning cruelty in portraiture (some of the very best photographers use this to wonderful effect – Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon and Irving Penn to name a few) it's just not what these photographers are about or what the show wanted to say about portraiture. This doesn’t mean to say that the photographers in the show are just interested in flattering their sitters, far from it, it's more that they are prepared to work very closely with their subjects to produce results that push both themselves and the sitter due to high levels of trust created whilst shooting.

Nigel: Are we in a golden age of fashion photography?

Susan: Sadly no. Very conservative times indeed. The control of the advertisers cannot be underestimated. This doesn’t mean good work isn’t being produced though – but a Golden Age it certainly isn’t. The work in the show starts at the early 1990s which can be understood as a very significant time in the history and runs to the modern day.

Nigel: What are the highlights of the exhibition for you?

Susan: Working with Mario Sorrenti and Paolo Roversi. The integrity of both photographers was overwhelming.

Nigel: As a curator, are you able to influence the manner in which the photographs are displayed?

Susan: Yes, and no……with some photographers I worked very collaboratively. With others it was much more of them saying how their work was to be presented. We of course discussed everything through before display but each relationship was different.

Nigel: Many of the sitters for these portraits are startlingly beautiful, yet remarkably thin. Are you worried about supporting the size zero approach to beauty here and influencing vulnerable teenagers?

Susan:  I am interested that you think some of the sitters are remarkably thin. Don’t forget that models have always been thin (in fashion) think of the body shapes of famous models of the 1960s and 1970s such Gerry Hall, Marie Helvin, Twiggy…. Are the body shapes we have in the exhibition any different? Not really. I think they look strong and independent.  They certainly are not anywhere size zero. All the models in the show are from reputable (top) model agencies and most of the commissions are from magazines such as W, POP, Vogue which never show size zero models and have a working rule of only using models over 16. The whole ‘skinny’ model thing is fascinating and comes, I think, much more from Hollywood rather than fashion magazines. The red tops' obsession with weight is much more ‘to blame’ if we are going to band blame around.

Nigel: Kate Moss emerges as the star of this show. Somehow she manages to upstage the photographers even.  What is it about her that makes her such a mesmerising subject?

Susan: Her ordinariness on one level and her total understanding of the photographic act on the other. I know that sounds like a weird thing to say, but an anecdote might better illustrate this. A friend of mine was a fashion photographer in the early 1990s. Kate was often sent to him as a ‘go see’. He never bothered to take her picture and couldn’t understand why she kept being sent. He just didn’t get it. They became friends. He was at the time seeing an American model and remembers walking down Kings Road with her and noted that all the men were eying her up and then looking and him and wondering how he managed to go out with somebody so beautiful. A week later after one of the shows he was walking down the same road with Kate and noted that none of the men looked at her. Not one. Get her in front of the camera and she transforms. You can’t take your eyes off her. I noticed this at the opening - when she was in front of the cameras she transformed, totally lit up. It was incredible. So we can relate to her as ‘one of us’ but also as somebody so glamorous and unattainable.  This is a perfect combination for obsession and fascination – for both men and women.

Nigel: What are your plans for future projects?

Susan: Coming up in May 2007 I am co-curating How We Are: Photographing Britain with Val Williams for Tate Britain. This is to take place in the Linbury Galleries and is to be Tate’s first ever large scale exhibition of British photography. In May I also start a book on photographic self portraiture which I am currently researching. In October I am curating an exhibition at Fotogalleriet in Oslo. I am also thinking about getting a full time job rather than working freelance.

Nigel: Thank you very much.