Roland Barthes coined a term for the unexplainable "pricking" effect that certain images have on us; punctum. But as one woman's trash is another's treasure, my punctum image may not be yours. It is wholly subjective and the result of one's ideolect (another fancy Barthes term). In layperson's terms, ideolect is simply what the individual brings to the image; his or her baggage if you will.
The following image took my breath away when I first saw it:
Doug Keyes, Becher, Water Towers
The technique was relatively simple. Keyes made multiple exposures on the same piece of film of about 40 2-page spreads from the Becher's monograph. For those of you unfamiliar with their work, following are four images from the series:
Bernd & Hilla Becher, Watertowers
The Becher's work is deceptively simple in the ways in which it addresses the concept of typology, particularly as it intersects with photography itself. In these photographs variations of an industrial, functional, utilitarian structure--the watertower--are represented. We've all seen them and we know the purpose they serve. Certainly differences are evident when we compare one tower with another, but when taken as a whole, when confronted with 100's of images of watertowers, those differences begin to collapse.
How many choices are available to a watertower designer/engineer? And how many choices are available to a photographer?
Keyes' photograph beautifully and economically illustrates this sense of collapse. Any differences that may have been evident in the individual images of watertowers have been subsumed by the whole and we are left only with a vague and shaky sense of "watertower-ness". In some ways, Keyes' footnote to the work of the Bechers communicates the concept of typology even more effectively than the Bechers did themselves.
Westerners tend to love classification. We categorize. Incessently. We are either black or white, true or false, gay or straight, Democrat or Republican, on or off, right or wrong, with us or against us. This is how we make sense of the world, and ironically, this is how I "made sense" of Keyes' image.
I tried to find its proper category. Because of my ideolect, I was familiar with the Becher's conceptual motivations, and I was also familiar with the work of an unsavory character from the history of the medium, Francis Galton. At a time when snake oil salesmen made a good living and phrenology was considered a science, he proposed that by photographically combining multiple exposures of several members of a particular ethnic (or criminal, or medically at risk) group, that the "essence" of a "type" could be revealed (and presumably avoided).
Keyes uses a compositing technique, but instead of revealing something essential about the Becher's watertower images, he only reminds us that "essence" is a myth. The more we try to find some underlying "truth" the blurrier it gets, and the more it slips away.
To see more of Keyes' work and to read and artist's statement, click here.
