CS 39J: Session 9

http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs39j/fa04/session09.html
29 October 2004

Guest Lecturer:
Linda Rugg, Scandinavian Studies Professor

When we look at photographs, we can think of them simply as objects in the world, but they are also a metaphor of what the object in the photograph, as well as what the photograph itself, means to us.

Linda Rugg wrote Picturing Ourselves which explores what it means to have pictures of ourselves, and how that has helped shape our self-image. Photographs also affect how we tell stories about ourselves and what we remember of those stories.

Roland Barthes wrote in Camera Lucida, “To see oneself differently from in a mirror, on the scale of history this action is recent… a painted portrait is not a photograph… odd that no one has though of the disturbance to civilization which this action causes.” Barthes was one of the first to explore how the advent of photography impacted society.

Before the 1850s, photographs were not widespread. With the invention of daguerreotypes, they became more prevalent. Daguerreotypes gained importance during the civil war because families wanted images of their sons before they went off to war. There is a notable change in the psychology of thinking about self-image at the time that photographs became prevalent.

The big shift that happened as photographs grew in popularity was that there now existed a way to document history that could not lie in the way a portrait could. Although, there is always some intervention of the artist, with photographs, that intervention is minimalized. At that time, photographs couldn’t lie, whereas paintings could exaggerate height, youth, and eliminate other flaws as well. Although we can now do those things to photographs with things like Photoshop, originally, this was not possible with photographs. They were an honest image of people.

Professor Rugg has looked at reflexivity – which is looking at yourself, focused and framed, with the extraneous details must be cropped out, edited.

Photographs have developed an intimate relationship to memory; in some ways replacing memories. We have a tendency to associate photographs with memories, and may even confuse a photograph with an actual memory.

Autobiographies are different from biographies because the author has access to an archive of memories. When photos became more prevalent, they became the basis for many of these memories.

The Mirror with the Memory:
The idea that we can capture the past, have it on file. Pictures in our head may fade and not be accurate, which again brings up the common theme often associated to the advent of photography, that photographs don’t lie.

Was Barthe right? Do we underestimate the impact photographs have had on civilization? To answer this question, Linda turned to autobiographers who wrote during the time of photographic prominence.

She focused on two people: Mark Twain (1835-1910) and August Strindberg (1849-1912), a Swedish playwright. Both of these autobiographers’ lifetimes overlap with the beginning of the photographic age, so Linda inspects to see if there is a reflection of this shift in their writings.

Photographs are often used as identification. But what is interesting is that photographs have become the authoritative force in determining if a person is who they say they are rather than the person themselves being that force. It becomes the task of the individual to resemble the photo as opposed to the other way around. Consider an outdated passport photo – you may not be allowed to travel using it.

Photographs can be truth telling, but b/c people think photos can’t lie; they can actually be a powerful tool of deception.

Twain was well aware of this and used it to his advantage. He did not feel photographs were truth tellers. Said photographs had portrayed him as a burglar, missionary, and lunatic among other things, none of which truthfully represented him.

From a very early age, Twain understood that photographs were not entirely truthful. When he was 15 years old, he worked in his brothers office as a printer’s double, laying the type letter by letter. This had to be done in reverse order so that when it was pressed to the page, it would come out correctly. In a photograph of Twain, then Samuel Clemens, at age 15, he holds his name – SAM – in his hands for the pose, but in reality actually holds it backwards so that in the photograph, it will come out correctly. This is a clear example of how Twain understood that photographs were a manipulation of reality, and that he could do the manipulating.

In his later years, Twain became a celebrity, aided by the fact that he knew how to market his own image. He had photo upon photo taken of him, and was the first person to ever trademark his own image. As in his earlier photograph, Twain knew how to manipulate the outcome of the photograph. At the time, photographs had to be carefully planned and executed, because the subjects had to sit still for long periods for proper exposure. Twain staged life-like scenes of him in private places, like his bedroom and study, taken as if he didn’t know the photographer was present. The irony of this is that at the time, there was no way to take a photograph without someone being fully aware and a willing participant, because of the necessity for maintaining a pose for such an extended period of time. Nevertheless, Twain used people’s idea that photographs were honest representations of reality to create the illusion that they were witnessing very private, intimate moments in Twain’s life. It was like he was inviting his audience in to his home.

**All of Twain’s photos are in Bancroft Library on campus.

The second man that Linda Rugg emphasized in her research was August Strindberg. Strindberg had a very different view of photographs from Twain. He believed photographs were so honest, they could actually access your soul. He thought photographs could capture things you couldn’t see in real life. This may have been somewhat tied to the invention of X-Rays, also during his time period.

In his later years, Strindberg was depressed and somewhat psychotic. It was during this time he claimed to be able to take what he called “Psychological Photographs” which captured the psyche of the subject on film. According to him, he would telepathically beam a story that elicited certain emotions to the subject of the photo which would cause him or her to experience the full range of their emotions. The story took precisely the time it took for the photograph to take (30 seconds or so).

Strindberg also experimented with color and made life-sized photos, trying to make the images closer to reality to fully capture his subject’s essence. As his obsession grew, he even went so far as to believe he could telepathically impregnate his estranged wife or make people sick by staring at their photograph and thinking ill thoughts.

Although today, this sounds extremely far-fetched, maybe it isn’t. People still have attachments to photographs and are not likely to rip up or brood negative thoughts over photographs of loved ones. It is an interesting idea to ponder… just how powerful are the photographs in our lives for constructing our self-image and the image we hold of others?

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