RD6-Staged Photos

Staged Photos, (Further to Q2 of Listed questions)

In terms of why Sally Mann set the children up (or at least she told the children to express their emotion in that specific way) with the specific look, I think the whole idea is to get the maximum attention from the viewers. People can stare at the children as long as they wish, and at the meantime they feel like being watched by the three youngsters. 

This brought up subject of photo staging. It is a familiar topic for anyone who had come across with photography. Not just photographers, even the models will experience certain set for the shoot. I remember when I was a kid and taking family photos, the photographer will always ask us where to stand and how to look. They would simply want to catch the best shot of us and told us when to smile. These scenes are very common ever since photography was born. Unlike photo journalism, other photos are often staged accordingly to certain sets by photographers.

A photo I found from Photographic Credits by Robert Doisneau may be a good example of staged photo. The belowing photo ” Kiss  by the Hotel de Ville” resembled Alfred Eisenstaedt’s image of a sailor kissing a girl in a white dress in Times Square on VJ day in second world war. Robert reminded us the beautiful image by setting up a similar photo stage. A lot of other photographers or artists also stage photo shots in order to convey their idea on these carefully set-up scenes.

(Kiss by the Hotel de Ville, Paris, 1950 by Robert Doisneau, online image from : http://blogs.photopreneur.com/worlds-most-infamous-staged-photos, accessed on 30th Oct 10)

(V-J Day Kiss, Times Square, 1945, by  Alfred Eisenstaedt, online image from: http://photos.codlib.com/2007/07/26/the-v-j-day-kiss-times-square/, accessed on 30th Oct 10)

Sally Mann, unsurprisingly as an photographer herself, set up the stages in rural countryside. She used her camera to capture the life of her children, naked and in some uncomfortable states. At the beginning of her introduction to her 1992 Aperture book <Immediate Family>, she wrote that:

“The place is important; the time is summer. It’s any summer, but the place is home and people here are my family.”

Yet the photo of Emmett, Jessie and Virginia didn’t turn out to look as comfortable as a family photo at all. It appeared to be more like a commercial shoot, she knows exactly how to stage and what to put on the photo to attract the attention. Every single detail is actually set up by her with her children who she would refer to be enthusiastic in participating. 

Some other photographers from the series of Immediate Family featured photos that contained uncomfortable look of Emmett, Jessie and Virginia. In the photo we are analyzing, Jessie, Virginia and Emmett stare right into the lens. They look like children but appear to pose in an adult way. Then there are photos including them with a cigarette, or wearing pearls and little else, or dancing with no clothes on. One is titled, almost angrily: The Last Time Emmett Modeled Nude.

These disturbing photos are among the few challenge conventional ideals of childhood. But again it is what the unordinary sense that caught the viewers’ eyes. Sally Mann has set up a photo that all can see the future adult in the child, wavering between youth and maturity.(Sourced from: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/art-or-abuse-a-lament-for-lost-innocence-2078397.html, accessed on 31st Oct 10)

                                         

 (Candy Cigarette , 1989 ,Image from : http://elynunezblog.com/?p=139 , accessed on 31st Oct 10)

Candy cigarette taken in 1989, shows young Jessie holding a cigarette in her hand. She posed like a young adult. There are other similar photos which are conflicting to what Sally Mann wrote in her book. Instead of nice warm family photos that are usually seen, she produced controversial series of photos that are somehow unpleasant. The fact that the children are asked to perform and act like someone else in front of the camera of their mother made the photos unnatural.

This reminded me of work by a famous Chinese photographer Jiao Bo. In the book of <My Mom and Dad>, he chose more than 100 photos among tens of thousands of photos he took for his parents over last 30 years. Jiao Bo’s parents had been living together for over 70 years. He started taking photos of his own parents from 1974 and lasted for 30 years.

In total, he took more than 12,000 photos and recorded his parents’ life for more than 600 hours. The primary purpose is to freeze the memory of his parents who are getting old and the series had moved thousands of people. Being warm and real, this series of domestic life of two old people had won Jiao Bo large amounts of awards. But more importantly, the photos had managed to tell story of the couple who may just be the stereotypes of parents to others.

Almost every single photo he took was usual scene of his parents in life. The whole series was classified as documentary photos and the photos are not particularly staged.They did not set up particular look to the camera and were kind of relaxed and natural in the set. Jiao Bo’s photos showed people a couple of real life, parents of a normal people in a documentary way. Yet photos are so beautiful in a way that made everybody who sees it see the real person behind them. More importantly, they capture the real picture of the person and can even reflect the souls.

The photo below shows Jiao Bo’s mother who help to scratch of her partner’s back. The photo is very real and seems like they didn’t even notice a camera behind them. It occurs to me again that both Sally Mann and Jiao Bo had same purpose of captureing the beauty and love of their family members, yet the photos comes out so different.

(Online Image : http://sh.villachina.com/2008-11-19/2231817.htm, Accessed on 31st Oct 10)  

I would like to include a similar famous work by Larry Sulton  Larry Sulton. He took same kind of series of his family some years ealier than Sally Mann. Larry Sultan photographed his father and family over a ten year period spanning the 70s and 80s as part of an elaborate project that included his parents own photos, home movies and statements.

(DAD ON BED, 1985, LARRY SULTON ,Online Image from : http://www.bbc.co.uk/photography/genius/gallery/sultan.shtml, accessed on 31st Oct 10)

The above photo “Dad on the bed” is very interesting one to look into. The photo features Larry’s father sitting on the bed, something between smile and sad. In fact, it is photo set up by Larry Sulton who told his father to stop smiling. To explain this, he suggested in the extract from <We are Family> that

“Photography is instrumental in creating family not only as a memento, a souvenir, but also a kind of mythology.” Some artists have confronted the role photography itself has played in creating and complicating our sense of domestic life.”

As Barthes analyzed in the book of Mythologies(1993),the unifying theme is the idea of “myth” – basically, a type of signification which projects an additional meaning onto an existing concept so as to make it carry a second, ideological meaning. To achieve that, Larry set and create his version of the Sultan family. While his father Irvin struggled with the role given, told to stop smiling. I wonder what the model within that picture think, will he be able to recognize himself in that photo taken by his son? What the photo tells is a man without a smile, yet in fact he was probably a happy man.

Although Sally Mann’s photos from <Immediate Family> also took pictures of real life, but the dark side of the children’s childhood. Signs of upset, injury and danger abound –such as a bloody nose, a west bed. There are also photos that are set up and the viewer sees future adulthood in that child. Sally Mann thinks that

“Photographs open doors into the past but they also allow a look into the future.”(Sally Mann, Photography Speaks II : 76 Photographers on Their Art by Brooks Johnson (Editor), Chrysler Museum)(Sourced from: http://www.photoquotes.com/showquotes.aspx?id=431&name=Mann,Sally#1432, assessed on 31st Oct 10)

Actually I can not yet judge whether or not the setting up of Sally Mann’s photo is for good or bad. But through analyzing and looking through similar work by other artists, I definitely have better understanding to her work. In the next entry, I will explore this subject and find out more.

References :

Sally Mann(1992),Immediate Family , Aperture, New York  

Robert Doisneau(1991), Photographic Credits, Thames and Hudson, ISBN 0-500-41077-1

Jiao Bo(2005),My Mom and Dad , HuaYi Publication Company, I S B N：9787801426970

Barthes.R.(1993), Mythologies, Vintage