We photograph texts to make them images. Text as image, image as text in an Amplification (Genette) of what is already there. This is a text in an artist’s book. The book as armature, and the surrounding architecture or super-structure of its coming into being (artist, curator, commissioner; profile, exhibition context, gallery, audience etc.) already exist at the same time as text and image. The text cannot be published (seen) outside of these pragmatics of context. The effect of photographing the text changes the material presence, overtly signals ‘image’ since it is reproduced photographically, but through printing and reproduction it becomes, just like all other elements on the page, an arrangement of ink on substrate. It’s ‘signing’ as photograph relies on a notion of the photographic object, or the notion of an original document or artifact.
Fig. 68 Tuxedo Junction
‘The Minimalist Object and the Photographic Image’, an essay by Alex Potts, is reproduced in its entirety in Tuxedo Junction, 1960, the first book I make with Gerard.121 121. Potts, A. (1999) ‘The Minimalist Object and the Photographic Image’, Sculpture and photography: Envisioning the Third Dimension. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press We reproduce the entire essay as photographic images – the pages of the book laid open and photographed on a timber background, captioned as ‘Eighteen photographs depicting… an essay by Alex Potts’. I was unaware of the Potts text until working with Gerard on this book, and its reference to Smithson’s views on photographing his work stayed with me, although the particular resonance it has for my practice only became evident while writing this thesis. The uncertainty that comes with presenting iterative versions of an image (multiple views) ‘diverts the[se] space[s]’ (de Certeau, 1998: 30) and can bring other types of information into view. Potts is speaking of Smithson’s concern as articulated in ‘Art Through the Camera’s Eye’ (1996) with undoing, through a multiplicity of images ‘the framing closures of a single privileged view’ (1999: 184).122 122. Smithson, R. (1996) ‘Art Through the Camera’s Eye’ 1971/1991’, Jack Flam (ed.), Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings, Berkeley: University of California Press. Potts further notes... ‘He (Smithson) was quite explicit that in photographing his environmental work, the photographer was not to represent it as object or image but to project an encounter with it…’ (ibid.) These two thoughts resonate with me as they encapsulate much of what I have learned through practice.