L'instant-monument, du fait divers à l'humanitaire
L'instant-monument, du fait divers à l'humanitaire
[Available in French only]
Whether the photograph shows the heroic death of a Republican soldier during the Spanish Civil War, a Vietnamese girl burned by napalm, or the suicide of a politician with the media in attendance, the principle is the same. Photographic reportage encapsulates the most significant episodes of current events-so much so that these images (and they are legion) sometimes sum up an epoch all by themselves. The most emblematic photographs are often those that reduce the complexity of a given historical situation exclusively to its photogenic manifestations. This is because photographs pull together, in a particularly compelling manner, the whole range of questions associated with the specific events, catastrophes, human interest stories and humanitarian emergencies indissociable from all contemporary concepts of history. The creed imposed by photography is this: there can be no history without instants. As recent attempts to celebrate, mourn or simply take stock of the 20th century have emphatically reminded us, photographs are monuments to the momentary.
LES ÉTUDES
LES ÉTUDES allows an author to investigate in depth a subject or an artist's practice.
Author: Vincent Lavoie
Artists: Willie Doherty, Marie-Jeanne Musiol, Gilles Peress and many archival photographs by Eddie Adams, Thomas Howard, William Eugene Smith, Paul Vathis, Weegee and others
Edited by France Choinière
Design: Joanne Véronneau
2001
Text in French, 204 pages, black and white reproductions, perfect binding
ISBN: 978-2-922135-13-8
Available on the
open access platform
OTHER TITLES IN THIS SERIES
[Available in French only]
Dans la photographie de Charles Gagnon, le paysage est généralement désert. Parfois il est présenté comme une nature préhistorique, parfois comme une ruine post-historique. Mais le résultat est le même : le paysage est déshumanisé et déshistoricisé – en apparence. Car, sous le paysage déserté par toute société et immobilisé hors du temps, des allégories fragmentées, des figures pétrifiées et des histoires suspendues ne cessent d’émerger, comme les ruines du sable, qui viennent donner à ces images la densité des rêves.
Si les photographies de Charles Gagnon sont stricto sensu documentaires, elles transfigurent la réalité. Elles utilisent les mêmes matériaux que le journaliste ou l’historien – le monde tel qu’il est, le monde tel qu’il fut–, mais elles les travaillent, les condensent et les déplacent, pour élaborer d’autres images, d’autres figures et d’autres récits. En elles se rencontrent un objet et un sujet, le monde et un regard, l’histoire et une conscience historique. Il est possible que, ce faisant, ces images disent, mieux que le discours historique, la vérité de l’histoire. Elles montrent au moins que l’histoire n’est rien en dehors de la conscience qui cherche à la comprendre et, surtout, que la conscience de l’histoire est aussi fragile que les rêves.
The mesmerizing power that the photograph has exercised over our collective imagination has created a situation in which it is hard to imagine other forms for images and image-making activities that might emerge through a reassessment of photography’s position in the world of picture-making technologies. Not limited to photography’s historical or contemporary rehabilitation, this consideration can also change the way that we conceive, construct, use or adapt new technologies, inasmuch as they are structured in a similar way (optical imaging and recording technology) or are conceived and operate within a photographic paradigm of realism (naturalistic and lifelike simulations in the case of digital pictures).
A Blinding Flash of Light presents an unusual model of photography, and traces its elaboration and transformation over a twenty-five year period. In doing so, it also raises questions about the nature and forms of knowledge that might exist between disciplines. For the model of photography proposed is informed by a number of distinct disciplines such as anthropology, art, and the history and sociology of science.