Light Brigade

Christian Reiner

Okanagan Photographic Art Workshops

13 - 15 August 2004

LIGHT BRIGADE

1. THE FORCE OF ILLUSIONS

2. THE BURDEN FROM THE PAST

3. THE PERPETUAL BREAKING OF MOLDS

4. UNFOLDING OURSELVES ONE WAY OR ANOTHER.

5. HUNGRY TIGERS AND LIONS

6. THE ORACLE OF NIKKOR-ZEISS

7. SHUTTERS OF PERCEPTION, AGAIN AND AGAIN

8. FROM NEGATIVE TO POSITIVE

1. THE FORCE OF ILLUSIONS

Prometheus, the bringer of fire from the gods, gave us the gift of tools.Orpheus brought us the use of symbols and helped us establish ourhumanity, our ability to express love and fellowship.

If we look back at the Altamira andDordogne stone age cave paintingsand compare the well developeddrawing style with the tools of theperiod, you can see in our far past anaesthetic advancement that faroutstripped the ability of thetoolmakers of the day.

“It has to be assumed that man wasan image maker, a dreamer and anartist, even before he was atoolmaker.”

Lewis Mumford, Art and Technics

We live in a machine age and have so for the last 150-200 years. Wehave made the machine the symbol of life and progress itself. We lookback and ahead and see the long chain of moments that stretch aroundus as intervals of mechanical innovations. Yet it is really our humanity thathas shifted towards an awakening of egalitarian values, slowly withhorrific periods of totalitarianism in between. These periods of outrightnightmarish abuse of power, like the German Third Reich, were fueled byindustrial growth, by a background of greed where people were pawnsand tools, themselves without a voice, instead only listening to the newlyinvented radio and to the propaganda of master race idiots.

Always delusions and lies at the heart of the deception. A whole new setof symbols and a new set of art meant to connect to the raw WagnerianRing cycle, and new shiny uniforms for the soldiers - made to subjugateand defraud a nation victimized by wars, famine and horrendous inflation.New weapons and guns - while industry smiled. This was powerful visualstuff i.e. Leni Riefenstahl “Triumpf of the Will.” Such is the force of illusion.Now things have gotten much more subtle. More amiable, yes, and waymore sophisticated - but behind the humour and the cheeky twists hidesan ironclad premise. Profit. Corporate, big, fat and real profit.

But you know all that. No point flogging the reclining illusion of ablack&white horse. There is a lot of photography in all this businessaction, tastefully done, expertly done. In my point of view everything donethrough a lens is photography.

2. THE BURDEN FROM THE PAST

One of the burdens from the past is the fact that religions, rulers andsocial groups have always created norms of harmony and beauty specificto them and their ambitions. Their emerging values are the base

requirements for the aesthetic of theirdays. It is easy to see that piety inreligious art, for example, was verypronounced during the period of theinquisition. Much as reading - art wasa privilege of royalty and church.

Art in the service of religion made theartist a person of deepest insight, ofalmost prophetic ability and hisimages were to be treated as puregospel, to be worshiped as much asthe altars and stained glass rosettesof great gothic cathedrals, superhuman and divinely inspired. Ofcourse all this was censored andgiven the stamp of approval by theofficials of the church. It is interesting

to see that the reformed religions displayed very little gold and glitter andhardly any imposing images of deities but prided themselves onspareness.

As technology became more advanced, it developed techniques thatallowed for a mass distribution of information, starting with Gutenberg.Printing became mass communication and masses slowly responded withdemocratic principles, they realized their strength in numbers, informednumbers. The first documentary woodcuts appeared with a strong socialmessage. Class injustice, war as it was - unglorious.

3. THE PERPETUAL BREAKING OF MOLDS

If you follow me along on my little journey, assuming that we all buy intothe idea that these two guys Prometheus and Orpheus played such adecisive role in our lives, the Muse not to be forgotten, we will see theirshadows in every piece of art ever made - from stonehenge to starwars.Now this is a very western view, but let us assume it is western truth.

Like lives that have passed, so do webreak the molds of a by-gone period.But we seem to carry the distilledvalues forward with us withoutrealizing it. It is in our nature to goagainst what has gone before, butwithin our opposition we seem to passon an antidote to whatever it is wedecide to achieve and the nextgeneration changes again andundoes much of what we hold dear.

The early 20th century saw all kindsof mold breaking. It was the end ofsome monarchies and most of thefeudal class systems of Europe. Soart split into many movements. Each

segment as fascinating as the next, with or without manifestos.Photography was right in there, mixing it up. Man Ray to Ansel Adams.Solomon wielding his Ermanox, Maholy-Nagy experimenting. Allreshaping the landscape of the possible. With all this breaking of molds,we have still other ideas, but we still seem to copy someone else until bynow all has been done, almost. So innovation has been taken to the pointwhere it seems unable to go further.

The photographic audience has always fed on novelty. How else can weshow a special event, but via photographs. The bag of tricks got fatter.Tools and ideas band together and create some of the most amazing andcreative hybrids and installations. But they are like butterflies and don’tlast long (until their attraction diminishes). There are advancements:super microscopes, fiber optics, Hubble telescopes - yes, but the world ofphotography after digital has not advanced much. Easier, faster - yes, butno more giant breakthroughs - so it seems. A lot of fine tuning.

Now to describe ourselves as being without feeling, love, desire, dreamsor disillusionment would be non-sense. Yet our time is dominated by

devices that are that. Our dependence on these complex machines androbots is getting more obvious daily. We have created patterns ofbehaviour that make it impossible to be without the machines' assistance.

This dependence creates obligations and thereby adaptation on our part.We start to co-habitate, we mimic their characteristics. A new normdevelops in us based on some of their principles. Sophisticated shades ofgrey give way to a crude black and white. We switch on or turn-off.Leisure time becomes more elusive since we have to take our celleverywhere. We are committed to a life of connectivity to the machine. Wemake choices and the effects are felt instantaneously. We press thebutton and it has gone, it has arrived and the answer returns equallyquickly depending on whether someone is taking a long lunch or not.

All the battles of the past, even Bonnie and Clyde are unthinkable if stateof the art, modern telecommunications had been around. Midway norPearl Harbour would have happened and probably the Atom bombswould not have been dropped. This kindness generated because ofmachines makes me want to credit the devices with feelings. Which is ofcourse non-sense. We built them to do a job. But a similar sense seems topervade the photo counter at the store. Better equipment, better pictures.Which is equally non-sense. Now nobody will say it outright, that would befoolish, but it hovers over the camera prices like a halo of sainthood.

4. UNFOLDING OURSELVES ONE WAY OR ANOTHER

It is the central blessing of our humanity, that change and innovation arewithin us, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, we walk about until we areattracted to a companion piece and slowly emerges a picture. As a sixtyyear old man it might be useful to convey my journey.

I grew up in the age of the rolleiflex and no TV. I was six by the time I sawa tape recorder. Photography was mostly news and advertising. Lots offilms from Hollywood, cowboy flicks. I was a regular attendant at theSunday movie specials. By the time I was twelve I became aware ofphotography as an art form. The Nikon Reflex camera arrived soon after.So did an awareness of Ingmar Bergman and the new wave films fromItaly and France. I used to sneak into the theatre and watch all of them.

I lived and breathed Albert Camus,Berthold Brecht and the Blues. Ibecame a disciple long before Iunderstood the prophet and hismessage.

Throughout my growing up time,photography became morespontaneous, more daring, more inyour face. I was an apprentice toLothar Wolleh, a top Europeanphotographer of fashion, portraits andthe official photographer of theSecond Vatican council. From there toLondon as an assistant to Bill Kingdoing Vogue covers and JohnVaughan who was the prime moverand shaker behind the Rocky Horror

Picture Show. Then became studio manager for Chadwick Hall andChrista Peters, both fashion photographers.

London was so cool you could get frostbitten on a sunny afternoon inJuly. A time of total disregard for tradition, a giddy time of promiscuity.Everything seemed to change. All the old made a perfect background forthis change. We were gardening in a soil enriched by centuries of wisepeople and everything smelled lovely - the roses were blooming.

But slowly a sense of the power of the US surfaced. The only place intowhich this London whirlwind could expand and in hindsight - it was acommercial venture. Everybody was getting rich in this huge same

speaking market. Most of the people I knew from the London time inphotography are dead now. Aids got them, or drug overdoses or drinking.You had to be mentally rugged to live this life. I eventually moved to NorthAmerica and spent five years in New York and then moved around tosome other big cities. There was yet another level of innovation andliberation. It was time to adapt to commerce on a grand scale. Hugepublishing engines and zillions of art directors, agencies and agents allworking on the great magazines and campaigns. The idea of reinventingyourself came into vogue. Apparently this is something that has tohappen to a Californian every 4-5 months these days.

Forever buying new equipment to stayahead of the curve. This 400 mmmirror lens will get you out ofpurgatory, this filter will make goodpictures for you, this sync speed willsolve all your problems, this portraitlens will make you like people and onand on.

5. HUNGRY TIGERS AND LIONS

We all know that there is a curious and predatory side to shootingpictures. We look for the magic picture - something that is outside of thebalanced view of the world. Capture it and immortalize it as a greatphotograph. Intuition, tricks, paparazzi, rabbits out of a hat, decisivemoments, manipulated moments. Cartier Bresson was often observedworking the streets for images. He is supposed to have moved like a cat.Weaving in and out of crowds. Very elusive. The only proof he was reallythere - endless rolls of film.There is a desperate hunger to unravel thewhole universe via a close-up of a banged up trash can. It is not angstalone - it is our humanity with all its convolutions that is at work. We havea tool and we try to make it do things, give the product a soul. We all readSusan Sontag and you read the magazines, you are informed.

Now it would be one thing to say thatwe are surrounded by chaos and thatwe are stable and single minded. Weknow that is not true. There are timeswhen it is us who are the chaos.Trying to make that little angel or devilhappy that both live inside.

The inner tiger growls and the lionroars and a sense of achievementrises in us. We are making symbols,we are forming a world - we arebuilding the totems of our hunt anddrawing them with our lenses. We arehollering and listening for the echo.We announce to the world that we aresearching and finding - come and look

at this, it has merit. It has. We are good. But we only have a small windowand a short time. We are becoming intervals, segments, an itch and tosome viewers of our images true visionaries and their admiration will last.Our pictures will appear in people’s dreams for no definable reason. Weare treading on a cognitive path in a psychic jungle. As you can see I amconstantly switching my scale. One minute I am personal, the next I ammaking vague generalizations. I think it is a technique by which I orientmyself.

The times when people could have genuine heroes that were veneratedfor decades has passed. Our turnover on celebrities is a year - maybeless. But that is not because of us, it is because they have lost theirdrawing power or ask for too much money and are simply replaced by aknock-off. The powers that be seem to measure these things with ageigercounter type of device made from rolled up hundred dollar bills andgolden forks and spoons. They make these rising stars work so hard thatby the time they are famous they are on the descending side of theirmeteoric curve. By the time Warhol reached his peak of popularity, hehad become a drugged and incoherent ghost of himself, just like one ofhis pictures - jumbled bits of imagery, juxtaposed. Look at Marilyn

Monroe. Same trajectory. Our timesare very hard on us, particularly if weare a creative person in this massmarket environment looking to get tothe top or at least be known.

6. THE ORACLE OF NIKKOR-ZEISS

Through the quality of the tool we are trying to develop clarity, expand our vocabulary. While we portray a three dimensional world in twodimensional media - we wish for something else. Like an oracle we tryand glimpse into an essence. A looking glass truth. There is somethingspecial about glass, a finely tuned crystal, underscored by the chemicalprocess that at least used to follow. It brings out the alchemist/magician inyou. You can almost conjure up images like Merlin when you are at yourbest - at least that is what it feels like.

So obviously to me the mostimportant part of my camera is thelens. The lens is my best and trustedfriend. The lens stands between meand my subject. It is the subject thatgenerates the real value of a picture.The quality of an image is within theworth of an image, a value that is verydifficult to give any limits. It eitherfeels right or not. A school picture, forexample, should be sharp because itis a thing to be recognized, featuresto be analyzed. In short it is asubjective call to say what is good,what is quality. The slight shake in adancer’s stage image might workperfectly.

7. SHUTTERS OF PERCEPTION, AGAIN AND AGAIN

We have lived through the tele photo period and the wide-angle times -each taking years. For graphic designers these distortions of theeveryday view were and are a godsent. They can carry a page layoutthrough their dynamic feel.

This out of the ordinary view has lately become embedded into thesubject and this might be because of music videos. Feeling that thephotographer can no longer portray them in their extraordinary way, theyhave pasted all their uniqueness all over themselves and just taking apicture of them will do the trick. Nose rings, hair, tattoos, dress, jewellery.etc. Everybody is selling something and all the Madison Avenue voodoo

men, spin doctors of the first degree,are out there hustling for the bigbucks.

Do we sometimes crave simplicity?An age of innocence? Yes. We mustundress ourselves. Take away theimaginary mantel of the divinelyinspired artist, the machinery thatweighs heavier in our heads than onour shoulders and return to ourhumanity. Develop our hearts andkindness. Simplicity. This workingwithin our limitations is wonderful. Wewill be able to understand our ownwork and improve as we wish. We willbecome strong and independent

individuals. We are free because outside recognition has becomesecondary. We are developing our language and our pictures arereflections of us and a constant theme will slowly emerge in our work.

Writing this has been an orientationsession for me. I find it hard to seeoutside this visual fleamarketsometimes.

8. FROM NEGATIVE TO POSITIVE

Just to sum up, we are now living in a time where anything is possibleand most of that seems to have been done. We are no longer in a timewhere one trend follows another - now they all live beside each other andour arsenal of tools is so huge, so complex that an artist could spend alifetime drifting from one technique to another and many do.

Now we have this enormous jungle of things coming at us visually. Somuch so that a days worth of visual bombardment would be more thanthe total lifetime intake of a person from the seventeenth century.

Now some artists mix techniques likecocktails, create hybrids andinteractive performances. We live invery interesting times and it is notsurprising that photographictechniques (including motion picturesand videos) have become hugelysuccessful as business which wassomething not obvious at thebeginning of the last century. As thenew mass media tools developed, itwas the traditional art form that lost itssheen in the public eye. Large glowingcanvasses became just anotherprinted picture in a magazine,competing with Nivea Creme andBaseball sluggers, movie stars andcar commercials, wars and famines.

Photography however fitted right in, so did caricaturists, typesetters,graphic artists and art directors. All enlisted to build great empires ofmedia publications.

This shift from fine art to applied art raises many issues. This liberationand diversity, it could be argued, seems to affect the foundation of art.There is no fraternity that can hold us back anymore. We have a stockmarket of the eyes and what triggers success and marks your fame is asambiguous as ever. We have entered the visual world of supply anddemand. No criteria other than public acceptance. No success other thanpublic approval apparently. Feeding this dynamic: short bursts of interest.

This push towards innovation and change has taken some strange twists.For instance - a very modern designer car can be so sleek in design that

the driver looks like a monkey, a Neanderthal - so seemingly outdated ishis visage. Recent surgical implants could be attractive because they areso nice and round and big, but I think it might be more the bionic qualitythat really attracts. Bionic woman, six million dollar man, Spiderman,Terminator, etc. etc. We have started to change our physique and withthis alteration process we are beginning to abdicate our role ofcustodians of this planet. We are loosing our ability or willingness toidentify with animals and nature.

As photographers we are part of thisprocess. We feed it and we live insidethis evolution. So where do we drawthe line, hey it is our decision. But wemust be aware that this strip miningmentality is out there - mean and purecorporate lust. If they can - they willmanipulate us and we should not besurprised by them going to church onSunday.

Now. Digital. Photoshop is wonderful.It beautifies anything. Of course weare addicted to it. It forgives all oursins. It makes perfection. As acommercial artist this is a wonderfultool to use. I have used it for more

than ten years. It is magic. We can create all the illusions we want.Misuse is rampant, but what is new?

I have drawn a gloomy picture for you and I probably repeated myselfseveral times over. So if you hear this, I am glad you are still with me. Wewill have to judge our talent and contribution ultimately with our socialvalues, the ones we have to built for ourselves. It is getting harder. Wewill have to look at the size of our footprint on this planet and where weplay the games we must play. In this crazy world of illusions with a millionchoices at a given time - a little terra firma is a good thing.

So where to go from here? There seems to be one thing that bothers meabout what we have talked about up until now. I have presented you withsomething like a dead end. “Whatever you do - recognize that it hasalready been done” kind of talk. That rings right, but only as long as youexclude the subject.

The subjects are everything. They are endless and offer opportunities andvarieties that will never fade. Combine that with a message, a topic, anews item, an innovation or something sporty or tragic or a documentaryand we have a world in front of us that is so huge and exciting - we can’tsit still. If our photography is subject driven, if we are really interested inthe person, the animal, the tree, the setting sun that we are looking at -then we must also view the final product in the same way. At an exhibition- celebrate the subject and we will see the value of an image. If we view it

with compassion we will see it forwhat it really is. Let it speak.

Now we have stopped dealing withthe introspective stuff and we are outthere, beyond ourselves. Forget theartist, forget ourselves. We areinteracting, whatever we do. Groupsare good. We discuss things, haveadventures together. Start anewsletter, like Robert Genn, thepainter (look on the web - he is great).We are inventive, look at the world,look at our neighbourhood, look atourselves as if from the outside. Wehave no doubt that we will excel. Wewill probably migrate into either themoney-makers or the other group that

do it just because, it really does not matter. Money does not cramp ourstyle - it can deliver lots of opportunities. If we become part of a supportgroup we will make friends and enemies maybe. All the little personalthings will be discussed. Your views on Africa, music, politics, injustice,relationships, the planet, bird counts, computers, photoshop, etc. Therewill be disagreements, but we are out there outside of ourselves.

That is what it all comes down to. We let it all hang out. Expressourselves, give support, ask for assistance, listen, go on trips together.Some things will crystallize and others evaporate. The scale has to bepersonal, otherwise everything falls flat. We can break more ground beingourselves than trying to be like someone else. Our feelings count. Theyare the thing that guides us. Now you might have noticed that themachine concept has disappeared at this point in time from myramblings. This is because at this stage of our development - it being nowa personal, inner thing - the machine does not have access. The moreconfident we feel in ourselves, the less we will hand over control todevices.

As we take pictures, we view thesubjects. We will realize that they arethe talent, the energy, the variablesand the surprise in our pictures. Asthe sun rises and sets, we will seemood changes in the subjects. We areliving in a theatre of endlesspossibilities. We must embrace it,because we are it, and validate oursubjects by giving them full credit - weare collaborators now. We are picturegivers and not takers.

We have become honoured membersof the Light people - forget the brigade.