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Contemporary
Photography
and Theory
Contemporary
Photography
and Theory
Concepts and Debates

Sally Miller
 First published 2020 by Bloomsbury Academic

Published 2020 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright © Sally Miller, 2020

Sally Miller has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988,
to be identified as Author of this work.

For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. x constitute an extension

of this copyright page.

Cover design by Eleanor Rose | Cover photograph: Dark Pacific Sun , 2014. © Mohini Chandra
and Christopher Stewart. Courtesy of the artists

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

ISBN 13: 978-1-350-00332-3 (hbk)

ISBN 13: 978-1-350-00331-6 (pbk)
 Contents

Figures vii
Acknowledgements x

Introduction 1

Part One Photography and identity

1 The honorifc and the subjugated portrait 9

2 The blank portrait and the intimate record 21

3 The portrait and the contemporary self 31

Part Two Photography, landscape and place

4 The politics of place 45

5 Non-place and new topologies 57

6 Ruins and the Anthropocene 67

Part Three Photography, performance and the

politics of representation
7 Gender and the selfe 79

8 Race, history and time 87

9 Performativity and disability 97

vi Contents

Part Four Photography and psychoanalysis

10 Psychoanalysis, representation and desire 109

11 Psychoanalysis, spectatorship and the gaze 117

12 The politics of enjoyment 127

Part Five Photography and the event

13 Photography, memory, history 139

14 Post-photojournalism and contemporary

images of confict 149

15 Photography, empathy and responsibility 159

Notes 171
Select Bibliography 208
Index 234
 Figures

1.1 Eileen Perrier, Grace, 2000. © Eileen Perrier. Courtesy of

Eileen Perrier 8
1.2 Bertilllon card of Francis Galton created upon Galton’s visit to
Bertillon’s laboratory in 1893 16
1.3a,b,c,d Eileen Perrier, Grace, 2000. © Eileen Perrier. Courtesy of
Eileen Perrier 18–19
2.1 Bettina von Zwehl, Untitled I, 1998, #1 (series of 7). © Bettina
von Zwehl. Courtesy of Bettina von Zwehl 22
3.1 Zach Blas, Facial Weaponization Suite: Fag Face Mask – 20
October 2012, Los Angeles, CA. Photo by Christopher O’Leary.
Courtesy of the artist 34
3.2a,b,c Vivian Fu, ‘Mirror Self Portrait in Los Angeles, 2015’, ‘Self
Portrait in Bed with Tim, San Francisco, 2014’, ‘Self Portrait in
Grocery Store, San Francisco, 2013’. © Vivian Fu. Courtesy
of the artist 40
4.1a,b Mohini Chandra and Christopher Stewart, Untitled from
the series Dark Pacifc Sun, 2014. © Mohini Chandra and
Christopher Stewart. Courtesy of the artists 47
4.2 Sally Mann, Deep South, Untitled (Emmett Till River Bank), 1998.
Gelatin silver print, 40 × 50 inches (101.6 × 127 cm). © Sally
Mann. Courtesy of Gagosian 50
4.3 Justin James King, Untitled from And Still We Gather With
Infnite Momentum, 2009. © Justin James King. Courtesy of the artist 53
4.4 Tomas Albdorf, ‘Dad and Me made Some “Art Installation”
LOL while Taking a Break from Hiking (Nice View To)’ from
the series General View, 2017. © Tomas Albdorf and Webber.
Courtesy of the artist 55
5.1a,b Roger Eberhard, ‘Panama City, Room 1704’, from Standard,
2015. © Roger Eberhard. Courtesy of the artist 60
5.2 Andreas Gefeller, ‘Soma 006’ from the series Soma, 2000.
Courtesy of Atlas Gallery, London 62
5.3 Trevor Paglen, ‘Open Hangar, Cactus Flats, NV, Distance ~ 18
miles, 10:04 a.m’, 2007. C-Print 30 × 36 inches, 76.2 × 91.4 cm. ©
Trevor Paglen. Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York 65
viii Figures

6.1 Tong Lam, ‘An outdated and abandoned theme park in

Chengdu, Sichuan Province’, 2013. © Tong Lam. Courtesy of the
artist 73
6.2 Joanna Zylinska, still from iEarth, 2013. © Joanna Zylinska.
Courtesy of the artist 74
6.3a,b Matthew Buckingham, Te Six Grandfathers, Paha Sapa, in
the Year 502,002 C.E., 2002, black and white digital c-print,
31.7 × 23 cm | 12½ × 9 in, Edition 7. Te Six Grandfathers, Paha
Sapa, in the Year 502,002 C.E., 2002, black and white digital
c-print, wall text, 152.5 × 110.75 cm | 60 × 43 2/3 in, Edition 5.
Courtesy of the artist and Daniel Marzona, Berlin 75
7.1 Amalia Ulman, Excellences & Perfections (Instagram Update, 8
July 2014) (#itsjustdiferent), 2015. Image Courtesy of the artist
and Arcadia Missa 80
8.1 Shadi Ghadirian, Qajar #1, 1998. © Shadi Ghadirian. Courtesy
of the artist 89
8.2 Omar Victor Diop, Jean-Baptiste Belley (1746–1805), from
Project Diaspora, 2014. © Omar Victor Diop. Courtesy of
MAGNIN-A gallery, Paris 91
9.1 David Horvitz, Mood Disorder, 2012–ongoing. Openly
circulating high resolution image fle. Courtesy of the artist &
ChertLüdde, Berlin 98
9.2 Sam Taylor-Johnson, ‘Self Portrait in a Single Breasted Suit with
Hare’, 2001. © Sam Taylor-Johnson. All rights reserved, DACS
2019 103
9.3 Hannah Laycock, Untitled 01 (Forced to Gasp [Blue]). © Hannah
Laycock, www.hannahlaycock.com. Courtesy of the artist 106
10.1 Lucas Blalock, Two Lettuces, 2014. Courtesy of the artist 110
11.1 Laurel Nakadate, Lucky Tiger #63, 2009. Type-C print and
fngerprinting ink, 4 × 6 inches. © Laurel Nakadate. Courtesy of
Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects, New York 119
13.1 David Levinthal, Untitled from Mein Kamf, 1994. © ARS, NY
and DACS, London 2019 142
13.2 Alan Schechner, Self Portrait at Buchenwald: It’s the Real Ting,
1991–3. © Alan Schechner. Courtesy of the artist 144
14.1 Christoph Bangert, from hello camel, 2016. © Christoph
Bangert. Courtesy of the artist 152
14.2 Richard Mosse, Better the Devil You Know, 2010. © Richard
Mosse. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York 154
15.1 Simon Norfolk, ‘Crni Vrh, Untitled No.4’, from the series Bleed,
2005. © Simon Norfolk. Courtesy of the artist 162
 Figures ix

15.2 Rosemary Laing, ‘welcome to Australia’ from the series to walk

on a sea of salt, 2004. C-Type photograph, 110 × 224 cm. ©
Rosemary Laing. Courtesy of Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne 164
15.3 Ahlam Shibli, ‘Untitled’ (Occupation no. 18), al-Khalil/Hebron,
Palestine, 2016–17, chromogenic print, 40 × 60 cm. © Ahlam
Shibli. Courtesy of the artist 168
15.4 Rineke Dijkstra, ‘Almerisa, Asylum Center Leiden, Leiden, the
Netherlands, March 14, 1994’. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie
Max Hetzler, Berlin | Paris | London 169
 Acknowledgements

Tis book came out of a conversation with Davida Forbes about photography, books
and teaching in which I said that I thought a text for students in their second and
third years would be a good thing. Davida’s suggestion that I should write it myself
was something I was less sure of, however, I am now grateful for the suggestion. I
would also like to thank Molly Beck, Nick Bellorini, Margaret Michniewicz, Sophie
Tann, Louise Baird-Smith and Alexander Highfeld from Bloomsbury for their
support as well as the many artists who generously gave permission for their works
to be reproduced, and the reviewers who provided such valuable comments and
suggestions.
I must additionally thank my BA(Hons) Photography students past and present
for their questions, thoughts and occasional perplexed silences which have all
directed me in writing this book. I am also grateful to Stephen Bull, Daniel Campbell-
Blight, Rachel Gillies, Fergus Heron, Francis Hodgson, Åsa Johannesson, Joanna
Lowry, Aaron Schuman, Christopher Stewart and Esther Teichmann for sharing
their thinking and ideas on photography over the years.
Finally, I must thank Craig for his infnite patience and Ursula for the immense
chaos and joy she has bought into our lives. Tis book is dedicated to my family.
 Introduction

Te relationship between photography and theory is complex, and for students, the
essay is ofen regarded as an arduous obstacle to the otherwise enjoyable experience
of taking photographs and making work. Tis book does not remedy that. However,
I hope that by ofering a series of essays on contemporary photography and theory
the complexity of their relationship may at least become more thought provoking.
By providing an extended analysis of a range of case studies from established and
emerging artists and incorporating new thinking from other disciplines, this text
aims to enable students to develop and expand their thinking about photography.
Tere are many ways of thinking through the work made by contemporary
photographers and I have, of course, not been able to cover all the artists, topics,
theorists and debates that I wished to. Te examples chosen are not always those by
the most recognized artists – in fact sometimes these have been deliberately avoided
to allow diferent aspects of established theory to come through. Te examples are
composed of those that are popular with students, those that I have found useful
from pedagogic point of view and some personal favourites – it is not defnitive, and
there are many other examples. I hope you enjoy fnding and interpreting them using
some of the ideas explored in this book.
To briefy explain the structure of the book, the book contains fve parts, each of
which ofers an introduction to some of the key areas of debate in contemporary
photography: ‘Photography and Identity’; ‘Photography, Landscape and Place’,
‘Photography, Performance and the Politics of Representation’, ‘Photography and
Psychoanalysis’; and ‘Photography and the Event’. Within each part, there are three
chapters which ofer a diferent approach to the section topic. Te purpose of each
chapter is to ofer an overview of a particular concept and develop an analysis through
an extended example or set of examples. Each chapter or part can be read
independently; indeed, the book can be approached as a set of ffeen essays. However,
there is a progression through each section with further and more complex ideas
being introduced. Tis progression is ofen also historical; though this should not be
taken to mean that newer works are more complex, it is simply a way of tracing the
debates that have occurred and deepening the application of theory as the key terms
and ideas become familiar. Together, the individual chapters and parts support the
integration of a range of key thinkers and theorists into an understanding of
contemporary photographic practice.
2 Contemporary Photography and Theory

Part One, ‘Photography and Identity’, addresses the relationship between

photography and identity from the early use of photography as a new technology to
produce honorifc images of wealthy sitters to its contemporary use as a way of
sharing representations of the self via social media. In this section writings on
subjectivity will be examined in order to demonstrate how particular kinds of ‘self ’
are constructed through the discursive framework of the photographic portrait.
Considering the portrait in relation to writings on subjectivity can help us to
understand what links works by artists such as Eileen Perrier, Bettina von Zwehl and
Hasan Elahi. Tis section will introduce the writings of a number of theorists
including Michel Foucault, Allan Sekula and Julian Stallabrass. Tough these writers
and their work may be familiar to many students, it is presented here as a means of
introducing some of the key ideas that will be developed throughout the book.
Chapter 1, ‘Te Honorifc and the Subjugated Photographic Portrait’, considers
the portrait through the categories of the honorifc and the subjugated portrait by
reading these through a contemporary example by Eileen Perrier. Chapter 2, ‘Te
Blank Portrait and the Intimate Record’, looks at how two contemporary genres of
portraiture – the blank portrait and the intimate record – comment upon and extend
these early categories of photographic portraiture. To conclude this section,
Chapter 3, ‘Te Portrait and the Contemporary Self ’, will examine the impact of
digital technology on the understanding and meaning of photographic representations
of the self.
Part Two, ‘Photography, Landscape and Place’, expands upon some of the ideas
explored in relation to the portrait in order to look at landscape as a discursive
construction – a way in which we assign meaning and signifcance to land. Like the
self, landscape is not natural but a cultural construction. How artists have chosen to
photograph land refects diferent historical and social values, hopes and fears. To
begin, Chapter 4, ‘Te Politics of Place’, will consider the picturesque and the sublime.
Photography inherited certain ways of framing nature from landscape painting, and
as such, aesthetic categories such as the ‘picturesque’ and the ‘sublime’ have ofen
dominated our ideas about what a landscape is and how we look at it. However, a
number of contemporary artists and photographers have challenged and reworked
these categories to ask us to consider our relationship to a range of issues including
colonialism, national identity and technology. We will consider the work of Mohini
Chandra and Christopher Stewart, Sally Mann, Justin James King and Tomas
Albdorf. Chapter 5, ‘Non-Place and New Topologies’, will explore some of the new
approaches to landscape photography that have been developed in order to engage
with emerging categories of place. To begin, we will look at Marc Augé’s writings in
relation to works by Andreas Gefer and Roger Eberhard. In the second part of this
chapter Trevor Paglen’s work will be discussed in relation to writings on the
topological landscape and the politics of the secret. Finally, Chapter 6, ‘Ruins and the
 Introduction 3

Anthropocene’, will consider the meaning of the ruined landscape as a means of

refecting upon the social, economic and political conditions of neoliberalism.
Examples discussed will include Joel Meyerowitz, Tong Lam, Joanna Zylinska and
Matthew Buckingham.
Part Tree, ‘Photography, Performance and the Politics of Representation’,
addresses the way in which a number of contemporary photographers have used
performance as a means of challenging traditional codes of representation. In
particular, we will address how performance has emerged as a way of engaging with
the post-identity politics of the neoliberal era. To begin, Chapter 7, ‘Performances of
Gender’, introduces the understanding of gender as performative that is elaborated in
Judith Butler’s seminal book Gender Trouble. We will consider Amalia Ullman’s
Excellences & Perfections as a way of exploring contemporary discourses of femininity
such as the girl and ‘the perfect’. Chapter 8, ‘Race, History and Time’, will consider
artists who use atemporal performances to challenge the understanding of race as an
ahistorical, essential category. We will look at works by Shadi Ghadirian, Omar
Victor Diop and Nona Faustine. To conclude this section, Chapter 9, ‘Performativity
and Disability’, will address how artists such as Laura Swanson, Sam Taylor-Johnson
and Hannah Laycock have used a strategy of performance to draw attention to the
way in which disability is a culturally and socially organized subjectivity.
Part Four, ‘Photography and Psychoanalysis’, introduces psychoanalytic theory as
a means of understanding the unconscious fears, fantasies and pleasures at stake in
looking at photographs. To begin, Chapter 10, ‘Psychoanalysis, Representation and
Desire’, will consider the work of Lucas Blalock in relation to the Lacan’s concept
objet a. In Chapter 11, ‘Psychoanalysis, Spectatorship and the Gaze’, we will compare
the work of Jemima Stehli and Laurel Nakadate as a way of exploring Lacan’s writings
on the gaze, sexual diference and fantasy. To conclude, in Chapter 12, ‘Te Politics
of Enjoyment’, we will discuss Richard Prince’s series New Portraits in relation to
writings on psychoanalysis, ideology and the Lacanian concept of jouissance.
Part Five, ‘Photography and the Event’, considers the way in which photography
has served as a social tool to shape and give meaning to traumatic events and
addresses questions about the value and limits of the photographic image. In
Chapter 13, ‘Photography, Memory, History’, the concepts of postmemory and
multidirectional memory will be used to theorize the role that photography might
play in mediating our relationship to past events of which we have no direct
experience. Te artists discussed in this chapter will be David Levinthal, Alan
Schechner and Marc Adelman. Chapter 14, ‘Post-Photojournalism and Contemporary
Images of Confict’, will address how a number of new aesthetics have emerged as
photographers seek to engage with current events outside of the ofen sensational
images that dominate mainstream press representations of confict. We will look at
the work of Christoph Bangert, Richard Mosse and Antonio Denti. Finally, Chapter
4 Contemporary Photography and Theory

15, ‘Photography, Empathy and Responsibility’, will address the afermath and the
debates that have taken place around the ‘late photograph’. Te examples considered
in this chapter will be by Simon Norfolk, Rosemary Laing, Heungsoon Im, Ahlam
Shibli and Rineke Dijkstra.
Te discussion throughout this book is underpinned by the understanding that
the photograph, as John Tagg expresses it, ‘has no identity’ and its ‘history has no
unity. It is a fickering across a feld of institutional spaces. It is this feld we must
study, not photography as such.’1 As Tagg’s writings show, we cannot analyse
photography outside of its political, cultural and historical context. For many
theorists writing on the contemporary historical period, neoliberalism is a key term.
Neoliberalism is a slippery and much contested term ofen used to describe the
actions, thinking and rhetoric associated with a set of economic and political practices
that have occurred in tandem. Tese include, but are not limited to, the deregulation
of markets, reductions in progressive taxation and the privatization, centralization
and reduction of public services. Tese changes have been ushered in under a rhetoric
that argues for the ‘common sense’ of economically based thinking and competitive
and entrepreneurial modes of relation across all sectors.
However, neoliberalism is not just an economic project. In ‘What Kind of Ting Is
“Neoliberalism”?’ Jeremy Gilbert draws attention not only to the ‘sheer regularity and
similarity’ of the basic elements of neoliberal policy such as privatization,
centralization and deregulation but also to the ‘extent to which a range of signifcant
cultural phenomena seems clearly to share and work to reproduce the basic
presuppositions of neoliberal thought and the long-term social objectives of
neoliberal policy’.2 Te extended reach of contemporary neoliberalism means that
there is a distinction to be made between the historical roots of the term in the
thinking of liberal theorists such as Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises and the
writings of contemporary theorists who are concerned with what Gilbert calls
‘actually existing neoliberalism’.3
Actually existing neoliberalism is ‘both a specifcally economic process and a
broader reconfguration of society’.4 Tis is why Henry Giroux has proposed that
neoliberalism is best described as a ‘political-economic-cultural project’.5 Giroux
traces the way in which neoliberalism functions as a regulative force, a mode of
rationality and a form of public pedagogy. We are perhaps most familiar with thinking
of neoliberalism as a regulative force where it ‘organizes a range of fows, including
people, capital, knowledge, and wealth’.6 However, Giroux argues that this is supported
by neoliberalism as a mode of rationality which ‘enables and legitimates the practices
of managerialism, deregulation, efciency, cost-beneft analysis, expanding
entrepreneurial forms, and privatization’.7 Finally, it is as a mode of public pedagogy
that neoliberal ideology is able to be ‘produced, and disseminated from many
institutional and cultural sites’.8
 Introduction 5

Critics such as Gilbert and Giroux argue that the crucial task for those who wish
to challenge the hegemony of neoliberalism is not only to locate its forms but also to
explore ways of thinking otherwise. Troughout this book we will be exploring works
that seek to address the present historical moment, to show us how we might perceive
it more clearly and, potentially, see otherwise. Let’s begin.
 Part One
Photography and identity

We understand and negotiate the signifcance of photographs of the self on a daily

basis: the portrait is perhaps the most popular form of vernacular and professional
photography. However, what does it mean when fne art photographers engage
with the genre of portrait photography? Te chapters in this section consider how
photographic history and writings on subjectivity can help us to understand what
connects works by a diverse range of artists including Eileen Perrier, Zoe Strauss,
Bettina von Zwehl, Hasan Elahi and Vivian Fu.
Chapter 1 considers the portrait through the categories of the honorifc and the
subjugated portrait alongside writings on subjectivity to demonstrate how particular
kinds of ‘self ’ are constructed through these categories. Chapter 2 looks at how two
contemporary genres of portraiture – the blank portrait and the intimate record –
comment upon and extend these early categories of photographic portraiture. To
conclude this section, Chapter 3 will examine the impact of digital technology on the
production, dissemination and meaning of photographic representations of the self.
Figure 1.1 Eileen Perrier, Grace, 2000. © Eileen Perrier. Courtesy of Eileen Perrier.
 1
The honorifc and the
subjugated portrait

Grace (2000) by Eileen Perrier is a series of twelve colour photographs. Te images

are all head-and-shoulders portraits taken in a studio with a neutral blue background
and sof, fattering lighting. Te subjects are posed; they are all seated with their body
at a slight angle, their head is turned to the side and they gaze over their shoulder,
above and to the lef and of the camera. Tey are all smiling (Figures 1.1 and 1.3a-d).
Tis simple description belies these images’ engagement with the complex history
of photographic representations of the self. As outlined in the Introduction, the
history and meaning of photography is not singular. As such, photography is best
understood by examining the interconnected discourses that give a range of analogue
and digital technologies concerned with recording and producing images social,
cultural and historical meaning. Tese discourses are constantly being written and
rewritten, with new meanings forged and others abandoned. Many artists who work
with photography are not concerned with refning or consolidating these meanings,
but commenting upon or contesting them.
Perrier’s work is a good example of this. While, at frst, Grace seems to be easily
readable within the genre of portraiture – in particular, in relation to the honorifc
codes descended from painting that have dominated the formal photographic studio
portrait since its invention – it does not simply reproduce these conventions but quotes
them as a means of commenting upon them. In order to better understand the nature
of Perrier’s interventions we need to explore the history of the photographic portrait.

The photographic portrait

Historically, portraiture was a privilege that belonged to the few who could aford
to commission a painted likeness. However, the invention of photography allowed
for the mass production of portraits. As such, the advent of photography is ofen
10 Contemporary Photography and Theory

seen as a technological development through which the privilege of portraiture was

democratized. For example, in Te Genius of Photography Gerry Badger writes that
‘everyone, thanks to photography, was given an identity – the daguerreotype portrait
was a magical proof of existence’.1 However, the way in which the photograph was
able to function as ‘proof of existence’ is complex. While the indexical nature of
photography means that it does indeed attest to the physical existence of the subject
of photograph. Te meaning of the self that is produced through photographic
representation is far from straightforward. In short, the identity ‘given’ by the
photographic portrait was not the same as that bestowed by the painted portrait.
Photography, through its distinct social, cultural, political and economic uses and
meanings, ofered a new kind of identity to its sitters.
Although the photographic portrait was popular and sought afer, the new
experience of the self produced by seeing one’s photographic likeness gave rise to a
range of responses from excitement and wonder to ambivalence, dissatisfaction and
fear. For some, the pleasure of owning a photographic portrait was sufcient in itself.
Tis can be seen in the account of a portrait photographer who overcame the problem
of impatient customers by giving them photographs of previous sitters. He testifed
that although some demanded another sitting, others were ‘entirely satisfed with the
substitute’.2 For others, being photographed was a more fraught process: Robert Louis
Stevenson remarked of his – yet to be taken – portrait that he dreaded that ‘it will not
be like me’.3 On seeing his photographic portrait Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote, ‘I was
really a little startled at recognising myself so apart from myself ’.4 While the actor
Charles MacReady suggested an ingenious solution to this problem of photographic
likeness: he would send his portrait in oils to be photographed.5
Tus, we can see that photographic likeness, so naturalized in discussions of
photography as an indexical medium, is complex: we must learn to recognize
ourselves – and others – in photographs.6 As such, rather than ‘magically’ making the
privileges of the portrait available to all, photography transformed the understanding
of the self that had been the subject of the painted portrait.

The carte de visite

Te carte de visite was patented by the French photographer André Adolphe Eugène
Disdéri in 1854. Te carte consisted of a small albumen print, usually a studio portrait,
mounted on a card approximately 2½ × 4 inches in size. Unlike the daguerreotype,
which was expensive and unique, the carte was afordable, mass produced and easily
distributed among friends and visitors. Tus, for many historians of photography it
is with the carte that the true democratization of portraiture arrived: ‘Te egalitarian
eye of the camera … matched by the uniformity of the carte as an object.’7
 The Honorifc and the Subjugated Portrait 11

However, it was not only access to the privilege of portraiture that produced the
democratizing efect of the carte but the way in which the ‘material culture’ of
privilege, the dress, gesture, posture and settings of the upper class, became available
to everyone in the form of studio backdrops and props. Te dispersal of the signs of
privilege produced an anxious discussion around class for in the photographers’
studio previously rigid social boundaries suddenly appeared to be little more than ‘a
combination of costumes and stage properties that could easily be simulated’.8
Also signifcant was the way in which the cartes themselves were a part of
commodity culture. Cartes were usually purchased by the dozen, with the explicit
intention of exchange, and it is estimated that 300 to 400 million cartes were sold in
England every year from 1861 to 1867.9 In addition to your own portrait, it was
possible to buy a vast array of cartes of public fgures and celebrities. Displayed in
photographic shop windows, these attracted crowds who were eager to see
photographs of politicians, royalty, actresses and courtesans. Tis was a new pleasure,
and several articles at the time drew attention to the disconcerting efect that the
display of these disparate collections had. For example, a commentator in Art Journal
noted that ‘the most curious contrasts may be drawn and the most startling
combinations efected ... when even the most hurried of passing glances reveals to us
the facsimile of Lord Shafesbury and Cardinal Wiseman, and of the French Emperor
and Sims Reeves side-by-side’.10 As Rachel Teukolsky has noted, in the photographic
shop window the ‘rigidly divided and stratifed Victorian social world became an
alarming jumble’.11
Te way in which the carte circulated is also key to understanding its signifcance.
Previously, portraits either had a limited circulation among acquaintances who had
a personal knowledge of each other or were located in specifc settings in which the
sitter already had an established role. Te practices of sharing and consuming central
to the culture of the carte meant that the photographic portrait began to circulate
beyond the boundaries of personal knowledge or professional context. Tis meant
that there was no certain way of distinguishing between the carte given by the sitter
as a token of friendship, afection or esteem and the carte that was purchased.
Furthermore, the studio settings and props common to all sittings meant that there
was ‘little to distinguish between the cartes de visite of the anonymous and the
eminent’.12 In short, ‘as a highly mobile, standardized commodity, carte portraits
easily slipped the leash of their intended functions to then take on ambiguous and
potentially disturbing new meanings’13 and precipitate ‘novel social encounters’.14
Central to these novel social encounters was a new kind of public visibility in
which ‘people began to report the curious phenomenon of a person being preceded
by their photograph’.15 As such, Annie Rudd has argued that ‘cartes de visite were
associated less with a personal, domestic conception of likeness than with a distinctly
public one’.16 Here the ‘cartes’ semiotic complexity – their status as both objectifed
12 Contemporary Photography and Theory

likeness and industrially produced commodity’17 is key. As Rudd notes the carte was
printed on a card that gave the name of the studio rather than the sitter, as such the
carte might be seen to be emblematic not the democratization of portraiture but of
‘the transformation of one’s face into a commercial product’.18 While the use of
clothing and props in the photographic studio challenged the understanding of the
‘natural’ superiority of the upper class, it was the performance of the self as a
commodifed individual that allowed the middle class to emerge as a unique social
group. However, the middle class was not the only social group that photography
played a key role in establishing.

The subjugated portrait

In his seminal article ‘Te Body and the Archive,’ Allan Sekula argues that the use
of photography by institutions, such as the police, that sought to observe, categorize,
archive and control meant that ‘photographic portraiture began to perform a role no
painted portrait could have’.19 Sekula proposes that photography is ‘a double system
of representation capable of functioning both honorifcally and repressively’.20 In
the judiciary and medical uses of photography that emerged during the nineteenth
century, the sitter is presented without the fattering or idealizing goals of traditional
portraiture. As John Tagg has described the repressive or subjugated portrait, ‘Te
format varies hardly at all … workers, vagrants, criminals, patients, the insane, the
poor, the colonised races – are taken one by one: isolated in a shallow contained
space; turned full face and subjected to an unreturnable gaze; illuminated, focused,
measured, numbered and named; forced to yield to the minutest scrutiny of gestures
and features.’21 Tis directs us to an important caveat in the understanding of the
photographic portrait as a democratization of privilege: the identity ofered by the
photographic portrait is not always desirable.
In order to better understand the subject-efects of the photographic portrait, we
need to turn to the writings of the philosopher and historian Michel Foucault.
Although Foucault’s writings encompass a wide range of subjects and themes, one of
his primary concerns was demonstrating what we regard to be permanent truths
about human nature and history change. Tis includes our conception of the self.
Departing from traditional philosophical interrogations of the nature of the self,
Foucault’s writings are concerned with subjectivity – the way in which we come to
understand ourselves as particular kinds of self, how certain understandings of the
self become dominant and why certain ways of being are privileged at diferent times.
Foucault argues that subjectivity, rather than a unique quality of individuals, is a
product of social, cultural and historical context.
 The Honorifc and the Subjugated Portrait 13

Of particular interest to photographic theorists who are concerned with the early
history of photography are Foucault’s writings on power. Or, more specifcally power/
knowledge, for Foucault argues that the emergence of new forms of power must be
considered in relation to the feld of knowledge that accompanies and sustains them.
In describing how contemporary forms of power/knowledge came into being,
Foucault argues that in eighteenth-century Europe there was a shif in the focus of
government where population, rather than simply territory, came to be understood
as the object of political rule. As a result, the power and stability of the state was no
longer seen to reside in the sovereign and their court, but in the people whose health,
strength and happiness was now seen to be the true measure of successful rule.
What emerged to cope with this new objective was a new form of government.
Tis particular form of government, sometimes expressed as ‘government at a
distance’, occurred through institutions such as schools, workplaces and hospitals.
Foucault calls these institutions that are connected to, but distinct from, centralized
government the ‘carceral network’. Te practices of government that occurred
through the carceral network required a new set of technologies that would enable
every person to become visible to those institutions newly charged with governing
the population. Foucault uses the term ‘governmentality’ to describe the ensemble of
techniques and procedures that are used to govern individuals and their conduct.
Trough practices such as the examination and the confession the people who
made up the population came to be ‘known’ in extensive details. Te details sought
were not just information such as their age and occupation but their state of health,
beliefs and habits. A key development here is the emergence of the human sciences,
in particular those sciences with the prefx ‘psy’ such as psychology and psychiatry. It
is to the language, practices and concepts advanced by the ‘psy’ sciences that we owe
our contemporary understanding of the self. As Nikolas Rose has summarized, ‘Te
birth and history of the knowledges of subjectivity and intersubjectivity are
intrinsically bound up with programmes which, in order to govern subjects, have
found that they need to know them.’22
A Foucauldian approach asks us to invert our common-sense understanding of the
self: the self is not a discrete, timeless entity; rather the understanding of the self as a
unitary and ultimately knowable subject is an understanding that was produced through
the project of knowing the population as an object of rule. Tus, we can see that the self
so naturalized in many discussions of photographic portraiture is a relatively recent
invention. Of particular interest to photographic theorists is the key role that
photography played in producing these new forms of knowledge about the self.
Although the photographic archive produced during this time was vast, it is
important to note that photographic records were only a part of an assemblage of
techniques and technologies that were marshalled towards the project of describing,
categorizing and storing information about the human subject. Te photographs
14 Contemporary Photography and Theory

acquired their meaning only by being embedded within medical and scientifc
narratives. As David Green reminds us, ‘Teir intelligibility does not reside in their
correspondence with a reality of appearances but in their relation to a variety of other
discourses, representations and signifcations – a corporeal semiotics – which
specifed the “body” as the nexus of a network of scientifc practices and new modes
of surveillance and documentation.’23
Physiognomy is an example of one of the scientifc narratives that gave these
photographs meaning and coherence. Te idea that it is possible to ‘read’ a person’s
character from their body, in particular, the face, can be traced to antiquity. However,
in the late eighteenth century these beliefs were formalized by Johan Kaspar Lavater
in his Essays on Physiognomy (1772). What distinguishes this text over previous
understandings of the connection between exterior appearance and characteristics
such as intelligence, morality and dishonesty is the way in which the classifcation
and identifcation of individuals is formulated in scientifc language. Lavatar saw
physiognomy as an empirical science in which human character could be determined
through the objective reading of facial confgurations. However, as many critics have
observed,24 the physiognomic categorization of particular bodies as ‘normal’ and
others as ‘deviant’ was rooted in social and cultural prejudices which were then
formalized as scientifc fact. In this way, bodily diferences and the social distinctions
that arose from them were constructed as necessary, rational and scientifc.
Sciences such as physiognomy were incredibly popular and their ideas widely
disseminated among a growing population through consumer products such as the
physiologies’: pocket-size books depicting social types that ‘served as guidebooks, as
elementary reader for “respectable citizens” of city life’.25 As Sekula has noted,
In claiming to provide a means for distinguishing the stigmata of vice from the shining
marks of virtue, physiognomy and phrenology ofered an essential hermeneutic
service to a world of feeting and ofen anonymous market transactions. Here was a
method for quickly assessing the character of strangers in the dangerous and congested
spaces of the nineteenth-century city. Here was a gauge of the intentions and
capabilities of the other.26

Tere are two fgures who are seen to be key examples of the way in which photography
was used to make visible the distinctions being drawn between diferent ‘types’ of
people at this time: Alphonse Bertillon and Francis Galton.

Alphonse Bertillon and Francis Galton

Alphonse Bertillon was a French criminologist and anthropologist who developed
the frst criminal identifcation system to use photography in conjunction with
 The Honorifc and the Subjugated Portrait 15

anthropometric and statistical methods. Although police forces were already

using photography to produce ‘rogues’ galleries’, these were vast and unorganized
collections of criminal portraits. In order to standardize the way in which information
on ofenders was produced and stored, Bertillon developed a system that he called
‘Bertillonage’. Te system used the front and side profle photograph that remains
the standard ‘mugshot’ to this day. However, as we have seen photographic likeness
is ‘slippery’ and was not capable of securing the identity of its sitter adequately.
Terefore, these photographs were supplemented by verbal, anthropometric and
statistical measures. Each Bertillon card contained detailed measurements of eleven
diferent body parts and a brief verbal description of any distinguishing features
alongside two photographs. In this way, Bertillon was able to produce what he called
a portrait parle or ‘speaking likeness’. Using Adolphe Quetelet’s concept of the average
man,27 the Bertillon cards were then organized within a fling system.
It is important to note that Bertillon utilizes photography in relation to already
existing systems of knowledge and organization. Te camera is not used in isolation,
but put to use within ‘a larger ensemble: a bureaucratic-clerical-statistical system of
“intelligence”’.28 It was the efective organization of the records within a system from
which they could be retrieved quickly that was key to the success of the Bertillon
card. Indeed, Sekula has argued that, for all its importance, ‘the central artifact of this
system is not the camera but the fling cabinet’.29
Nonetheless, Bertillon’s system should not be understood as simply a more
efcient method of storage and retrieval: the way in which he organized and
categorized the records was ‘absolutely central to its knowledge efect’.30 In Bertillion’s
system individuals acquire their meaning – their individuality – only in relation to
others. Te organization of the photographic portrait within an archive is
paradoxically what allows for the subject to emerge as a unique individual. And the
way in which individual’s individuality – their diference – was organized was not
neutral. In Bertillon’s use of Quetelet’s concept of the average man, the mean or
normal point in statistical analysis is confated with social ‘norms’ such that there is
a ‘slippage from a purely statistical to a discriminatory social law of averages’.31
Te concept of the average man brings us to our second example: Francis Galton.
Galton is known for developing the technique of composite portraiture. In this
process negatives of diferent subjects are combined through repeated partial
exposures to produce a single image. Like Bertillon, Galton was infuenced by the
work of Quetelet. However, rather than seeking to identify the unique features of an
individual body in order to secure a defnitive, unique identifcation, Galton sought
to produce a visual record of the characteristics common to a particular group.
Indeed, the composites that Galton produced of criminality, health and disease are
not of people at all. As Shawn Michelle Smith has noted, ‘Galton’s “typical” portraits
represent only imaginary beings, mathematical averages of actual people. Tey are
16 Contemporary Photography and Theory

Figure 1.2 Bertilllon card of Francis Galton created upon Galton’s visit to Bertillon’s
laboratory in 1893.

not likenesses, material referents for individual bodies, but portraits of an abstract
type, representations that supposedly reveal the “essence” of a biologically determined
group.’32
What is particularly troubling about Galton’s work is the way in which his interest
in social Darwinism led him to advocate eugenics. In Galton’s writings on heredity
the unemployed, the criminal and the insane as well as the accomplished, the
intelligent and the good are understood as biological categories which he proposed
should be controlled through selective breeding. However, as David Green has
stressed, it is important to see Galton’s ideas in relation to the emergence of the middle
class: ‘Insofar as eugenics proposed the reordering of society in accordance with the
distribution of mental abilities and cognitive skills amongst the population, it placed
a high value on those whose contribution to society was based upon intellectual
expertise rather than the ownership of capital or the supply of labour.’33 Te composite
portrait thus served a particular social function obscured by the scientifc language in
which it was described: it used photography as evidence of the innate superiority of
the emergent middle class. Here the argument for the ‘born’ degeneracy of the
criminal went hand in hand with establishing the ‘natural’ intellectual and moral
superiority of the middle classes. Such that ‘the professional middle class was to be
clearly diferentiated from both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat’.34
As an example, one need only look at the portrait of Galton created during his visit
to Bertillon’s laboratory in France (Figure 1.2). Te portrait takes the form of a
Bertillon card. However, the exclusion of any of the anthropometric measurements
and the use of ‘M. Galton’ mitigate the meaning of the portrait: the photograph does
not depict Galton as a criminal. As Susan Bailey has observed of this portrait, ‘Te
photograph, with its halo of numbers, is both homo statisticus, the supplement to
statistician Quetelet’s “average man,” and a portrait of the scientist dispassionately
submitting his body to measurement.’35 As such, the portrait mobilizes honorifc and
 The Honorifc and the Subjugated Portrait 17

subjugated conventions together in order to present Galton as a subject emblematic

of the emerging middle classes: a modern man of science.
As Sekula reminds us, it is only ‘on the basis of mutual comparison, on the basis of
the tentative construction of a larger, “universal” archive, that zones of deviance and
respectability could be clearly demarcated’.36 Tus, we can see how both the honorifc
and the subjugated portrait
presupposed a certain kind of individual that preceded any shot of a particular
individual. Te diferences in terms of which modern individuals could be said to
belong to one or more categories were bestowed on those individuals, not by any
particular photograph, … but by the generic protocols for classifying, posing, shooting,
and naming subject matter that transformed virtually anyone and anything into a
classifable image.37

Eileen Perrier: Grace

To conclude, let’s return to Eileen Perrier’s Grace. If we consider the images of the
series individually (Figures 1.3 a-d), they each conform to the conventions of the
honorifc image. Te subject is elevated through the use of fattering lighting, the low
position of the camera and the pose: the three-quarter profle in which the subject
gazes into distance is one that is frequently adopted by politicians to suggest a sense of
purpose and destiny. However, Grace is a series of portraits that uniformly uses these
elements. Te repetition of the same conditions: background, lighting, camera angle
and pose, is something that is associated with the subjugated portrait. Te uniformity
of the portraits directs us away from reading them as ‘individual’ portraits towards
seeking out a connection between the people pictured, to speculate about why they
have been photographed in this way.38
However, our inquiry is disrupted by two elements: the sheer range of subjects
pictured, diferent sexes, ages and ethnicities, and the fact that they are smiling. Te
smile is not commonly found in any of the types of portraiture we have discussed so
far. However, it is a common feature of vernacular photography. Indeed, David Bate
has speculated that the smile ‘emerged in photography as a popular convention
precisely to signify the willing – “happy” – participation of the sitter “to-be-
photographed”’.39 In Perrier’s series, the smile is also what directs us to what unites
these subjects: they all have diastema, a gap tooth. Diastema has signifed diferently
across cultures and historical periods. In the Middle Ages a gap tooth was regarded
as a sign of a strongly sexed nature. In Ghana, Namibia and Nigeria diastemata are
considered a sign of beauty and fertility, while, in France, history has furnished
diastema with a diferent meaning: they are called ‘dents du bonheur’ (lucky teeth).
Tis expression is purported to have originated in Napoleon’s time. As perfect front
18 Contemporary Photography and Theory

teeth were required to open the powder magazine used in rifes, those with diastema
were – luckily – classifed as unft to fght. Diastema has thus been understood as a
sign of vice, of beauty, of fertility and of luck. In addition, because diastema occurs
naturally in children, for many they recall the innocence of childhood. In Grace,
elements such as the use of the colour blue for the background and clothing of the
sitters are reminiscent of the school portrait and evoke the latter meaning. However,
the other meanings and associations are not excluded by these elements. Similarly,
the title does not serve to secure a particular meaning, but ofer a further set of
associations. Grace is a name, a quality and a religious blessing. In Perrier’s work it
carries an additional meaning. Te frst photograph in the series is of Perrier’s mother,
Grace. However, what does the repetition of ‘Grace’ as a title for the other portraits
mean? Here, grace functions in relation to an interior quality. Tat the subjects
possess grace is also signalled by the ‘halo’ efect produced by careful lighting of the
backdrop. In this way, Perrier builds a new set of meanings: the conventions of the
subjugated portrait are used in relation to the scientifc understanding of diastema as
an inherited faw. However, through the conventions of the honorifc portrait Perrier
links diastema to both Grace and grace in order to pay tribute to her inheritance.
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