Quotable Artist On Photography

(Hadden, 2007)

AS I SEE straight photography, it means using the medium as itself, not as painting or theater. . . . All subject matter is open to interpretation, [and] requires the imaginative and intelligent objectivity of the person behind the camera.The realization comes from selection, aiming, shooting, processing with the best technic possible to project your comment better. . . . [Yet] technic for technic’s sake is like art for art’s sake— a phrase of artistic isolationism, a creative escapism. . . . In short, the something done by photography is communication. For what our age needs is a broad, human art, as wide as the world of human knowledge and action; photography cannot explore too far or probe too deeply to meet this need.

—Berenice Abbott (1898–1991)

THE ANSWER comes always more clearly after seeing great work of the sculptor or painter, past or present, work based on conventionalized nature, superb forms, decorative motives.That the approach to photography must be through another avenue, that the camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh.

—Edward Weston (1886 –1958)

THE CAMERA CAN only record what is before it, so I must await and be able to grasp the right moment when it is presented on my ground glass. In portraiture, figures, clouds—trying to record ever changing movement and expression, everything depends on my clear visions, my intuition at the important instant, which if lost can never be repeated.

—Edward Weston (1886 –1958)

The Image and the Archive: A Semiotic Approach

Dennis Dunleavy, San Jose State University

(HANDBOOK OF VISUAL COMMUNICATION: THEORY, METHODS, AND MEDIA, 2005: 258-259)


ARCHIVE/IMAGE INTERRELATE AS INDEXICAL SIGNS
The etymological root of the word archive as a place for preserving historical material is drawn from the Greek archeion or official documents from a government house.5 The authority of the archive resides in the power of signification relating to a system of signs that communicate an aura of immutable facts concealing larger social, cultural, political, economic, and historic contingencies. Further, the archive as a source of social knowledge
also mediates experience, rarifies representations, and extenuates interpretants. At the same time, historic images hold semiotic value because they have been appropriated as objects of cultural significance. In the process of collecting and conserving objects, the curator often acts as the custodian and agent of interpretants. With some level of confidence, semiotics offers a systematic approach toward reading the layers of signification
in an archived image as they function to intermediate the causal connection between institution and artifact. According to Peirce's schema, historic images as indexical signs correlate a causal connection to a hierarchical social order by virtue of value exchange placed on them through collecting and conservation.6 The archived image, as an indexical sign of a semiotic object, that is, the archive, indicates or points toward an actual or imagined causal connection.7 Therefore, without considering the interrelation of objects and the existential connection of how the historic image "points-to" the archive as a source of socialized knowledge, only a superficial illusion of the past may be achieved (Zeman, 1977, pp. 36-37).

ARCHIVE/IMAGE INTERRELATE AS ICONIC SIGNS
Semioticians have long argued over Peirce's division of signs; however, the notion of an icon, something that "partakes of the life of its object," has been the most problematic (Zeman, 1977, p. 37). As Moriarty observed, sign systems are "grounded in perception, extended internally through cognition and language, and modified through social and cultural frames."8 The archived image intrinsically resembles the similarities and properties of an object and therefore leads the viewer to believe it to be an immutable and objective representation of that which has been captured by the camera. In this way, the signifier and the signified become inextricably linked (Carter, 1998). In an archive, signification operates through the transient process of encoding and decoding meanings. As researchers sift through historic material, images act as visual clues whereby knowledge of a specific historic contingency is decoded through interplay of emotional and intellectual appeals. For Pink (2001), "Any experience, action, artifact, image or idea is never definitively just one thing but may be redefined differently in different situations, by different individuals and in terms of different discourse."9 The archived image, as a sign within a series of signs, that is, the collection, infers meaning through associations and interrelations between signifier and signified. This process becomes abductive when the viewer uses observation or visual cues to make sense of a scene in order to construct a logical hypothesis about the subject, relationships, or patterns. Further, this is why as Moriarty noted "Semiotics and the notion of abduction can be such a useful tool in visual
communication research and theory building."

ARCHIVE/IMAGE INTERRELATE AS SYMBOLIC SIGNS
The symbolic signification of images resonates from the conventional associations to which they are anchored with a particular context. The meaning of an archived image begins with the researcher's experience with the conventional relation between object and sign (Greenlee, 1973, p. 93). In one respect, the sign system of index and icon is brought together through the conventional explanations of agreed on meanings. For Zeman, "The employment of icons and indexes is a necessary condition of communication but the conceptualization that is so essential a part ofhuman interaction with the environment rests directly on symbols" (1977, p. 38). The researcher approaches the archive with a set of assumptions, expectations, and problems to solve. Meanings grow through experience with other signs, especially icons. As a sign, a symbol is not naturally or universally linked to the semiotic object, but is bound by the intellectual and emotional associations made through the social conventions used. In Moriarty's analysis of the power of advertising images, she concluded that what is visually communicated and mediated for us is often associated with "lived experience."

Corak Seni Baroque pada Fotografi Potret dalam Karya-Karya Andreas Darwis Triadi

Irwandi, 2007

A. Pendahuluan
Baroque merupakan sebuah istilah untuk mengkategorikan sebuah era dalam perkembangan peradaban manusia (termasuk seni) yang terjadi di Eropa. Gerakan ini terjadi sekitar tahun 1600 sampai 1750. Era ini merupakan bagian akhir dari zaman renaisance dan merupakan awal gerakan protestantism yang terjadi di Jerman bagian utara dan Belanda. Protestantism sendiri merupakan wujud perlawanan atas gerakan tokoh-tokoh Kristen Katolik di Roma yang dipandang telah menyimpang dari misi keagamaannya. Sebagaimana diketahui bahwa karya seni bisa menjadi cerminan masyarakat di tempat karya itu tercipta (Sumardjo, 2000:233). Dalam hal ini, karya-karya seni yang tercipta pada zaman baroque juga merupakan cerminan keadaan zaman tersebut sehingga memiliki ciri-ciri khusus yang tentunya berbeda dengan corak seni pada zaman-zaman sebelumnya.
Penggunaan istilah baroque sendiri sebenarnya belum dapat dijelaskan secara pasti. Seperti yang dinyatakan Read dalam buku Seni: Arti dan Problematikanya terjemahan Soedarso Sp.(2000:76), bahwa kata baroque berasal dari sebuah kata dalam bahasa Portugis yaitu barroco yang berarti jenis mutiara besar yang kasar yang biasa dipakai untuk perhiasan badan yang penuh ornamentasi di masa itu. Tidak diketahui bagaimana istilah tersebut bisa menjadi istilah umum. Namun menurut Herr Osborn bahwa pengucapan kata baroque secara onomatopoeia menghasilkan nada suara yang gelap dan berat, jelas menyatakan bentuk-bentuk yang berat, menonjol, dan agak terlampau jenuh, yang harus dipaksa bergerak untuk menyatakan impresinya. Dari pernyataan ini didapatlah sebuah gambaran tentang corak seni baroque yang menurut Barnes mengandung unsur tekanan yang kuat, kekuatan emosi, dan sesuatu yang elegan (Barnes, 2005).
Salah satu teknik visualisasi yang terkenal pada zaman baroque adalah teknik chiaroscuro yang digunakan oleh seorang pelukis Belanda yang bernama Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn. Teknik yang berkaitan dengan pencahayaan ini sampai sekarang masih sering diterapkan dalam bidang fotografi dengan fungsi yang tak jauh berbeda dengan fungsi aslinya pada tahun 1600. Karena kepopuleran teknik tersebut, nama pelukis yang secara konsisten menggunakannya diabadikan ke dalam sebuah nama teknik pencahayaan, yaitu Rembrandt lighting.
Tulisan ini akan mengulas bagimana teknik tersebut diaplikasikan ke dalam karya fotografi, dalam hal ini pada fotografi potret karya Andreas Darwis Triadi. Untuk itu, akan dilakukan tinjauan yang berkaitan dengan similaritas visual dan muatan tema antara lukisan bercorak seni baroque dengan beberapa karya foto potret yang dibuat oleh fotografer Darwis Triadi.

B. Karakteristik Seni Baroque
Menurut Sullivan (2005), bahwa karateristik seni Baroque terbentuk dari beberapa unsur, seperti sense of movement, energy dan tension. Sedangkan menurut Read (terjemahan Soedarso Sp., 2000:77), Baroque mencakup pengertian ganjil, aneh atau luar biasa. Kesemuanya dapat tampil secara nyata maupun tidak. Artinya, semua atau sebagian unsur tersebut dapat dilihat dan dirasakan oleh pengamat karya yang dimaksud secara visual maupun secara tematik. Sedangkan dalam kaitannya dengan seni lukis, ciri visual yang melekat pada corak seni Baroque adalah kontras cahaya (gelap-terang) yang dominan dan menghasilkan kesan dramatis pada lukisan. Teknik seperti ini dikenal dengan sebutan chiaroscuro yang berasal dari dua kata dalam bahasa Italia yaitu kata chiaro yang berarti terang, dan oscuro yang berarti gelap (Vishny, 2005). Salah satu pelukis yang terkenal dengan teknik ini ialah Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn. Karena Kepiawaiannya dalam memanfaatkan teknik tersebut, diyakini hingga saat ini belum ada satupun pelukis yang dapat menandingi efek dari teknik chiaroscuro atau bold impasto yang ia dihasilkan.

C. Chiaroscuro dalam Fotografi Potret Karya Andreas Darwis Triadi
Sebelum pembahasan tentang pemanfaatan teknik chiaroscuro dalam foto potret karya Darwis Triadi, akan ditunjukkan terlebih dahulu salah satu lukisan karya Rembrandt yang berkaitan atau yang memiliki similaritas dengan karya Darwis Triadi yang akan dibahas. Selain itu, ditampilkan pula karya-karya Darwis Triadi yang dijadikan bahan pembahasan kali ini. Hal ini dilakukan agar pembaca dapat ikut membandingkan dan melakukan evaluasi similaritas dari dua genre kesenian yang berbeda tersebut. Selain itu, hal ini dilakukan untuk memberikan gambaran akurat tentang teknik chiaroscuro kepada pembaca.

Gambar C. 1.
Self-Portrait by Rembrandt , 86 x 70.5 cm, 1669

Gambar C.2

Foto Karya A. Darwis Triadi

Dari dua karya di atas, secara garis besar dapat dilihat beberapa similaritas visual di dalamnya seperti; subjek foto (subject matter), pencahayaan (lighting), ketajaman (sharpness) dan skema warna (color scheme) yang digunakan. Subject matter yang ditampilkan pada kedua karya di atas sama-sama manusia yang sedang berpose.
Dari segi lighting, dua karya di atas memperlihatkan penggunaan sumber cahaya yang paling dominan datang dari arah samping-atas subjek. Hal itu terlihat pada bayangan yang dihasilkan. Selain itu, kedua karya di atas juga sama-sama dibuat dengan teknik pencahayaan low key. Ini diperlihatkan dengan dominasi tone rendah pada area gambar.

Gambar C.2
Foto Karya A. Darwis Triadi

Dari sisi sharpness-nya, kedua karya di atas –dengan teknik yang berbeda–sama-sama menghasilkan ”selective sharpening” dimana bagian wajah ditampilkan lebih fokus daripada bagian lainnya. Kesan pemisahan antara subjek dengan latar belakang tidak terlihat dengan jelas. Hal itu merupakan efek dari pengaburan kontur subjek. Sedangkan dari pewarnaannya, keduanya tampil dalam skema warna monokromatik, dimana karya didominasi oleh warna tertentu.
Pada karya Darwis Triadi di atas dapat ditangkap sebuah kesan yang juga merupakan salah satu ciri khusus corak seni baroque, yaitu energi/kekuatan. Dalam hal ini kekuatan yang dimaksud bukanlah kekuatan dalam makna harfiah, namun lebih pada kekuatan karakter subjek yang ditampilkan. Dengan demikian dapat dikatakan bahwa karya Darwis Triadi yang ditampilkan di atas mengandung nilai-nilai visual yang mengacu pada corak seni baroque.

D. Penutup
Melalui kepiawaian estetisnya, Darwis Triadi memanfaatkan prisip-prinsip cipta corak seni baroque ke dalam media fotografi. Karya-karyanya di atas merupakan hasil upayanya untuk menampilkan corak seni baroque dari media lukis menuju ke dalam media fotografi. Adanya perbedaan teknis sebagai konsekuensi dari perbedaan karakter media yang digunakan secara otomatis juga akan memperkaya ragam penampilan karya visual yang bernuansa seni baroque.
”Penjelmaan” teknik chiaroscuro dalam seni lukis menjadi Rembrandt lighting dalam fotografi menunjukkan bahwa terbuka berbagai kemungkinan untuk melakukan tranformasi esensi estetis dari satu genre seni ke genre seni lainnya. Dikatakan demikian karena chiaroscuro hanyalah salah satu dari sekian banyak ciri khas corak seni baroque.

Daftar Pustaka
Association of Professional Photographers Indonesia Volume 1, Jakarta: APPI, 1994.
"Chiaroscuro." Microsoft® Encarta® 2006 [DVD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2005.
Herbert Read, Seni: arti dan problematikanya. Terjemahan Soedarso Sp., Yogyakarta: Duta Wacana University Press, 2000.
Sullivan, Edward J. "Baroque Art and Architecture." Microsoft® Encarta® 2006 [DVD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2005.
Sumardjo, Jakob, Filsafat Seni, Bandung: Penerbit ITB, 2000.
Vishny, Michele. "Rembrandt." Microsoft® Encarta® 2006 [DVD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2005.

Cultural Theory: The Key Thinkers

[Andrew Edgar and Peter Sedgwick, 2002: 16-18]

BARTHES, ROLAND (1915-1980)

French literary critic who was a key figure both in the development of structuralism — in particular in the application of techniques derived from semiology to the analysis of everyday life and popular (as well as high) culture — and in the post-structuralist criticism of structuralism. His work covers an enormous range of issues and topics, including the nature of writing, authorship and reading; myth and ideology; fashion; photography; narrative; the work of diverse writers (including Sade, Michelet, Proust and Balzac) and composers; and subjectivity and sexuality.

Barthes' early works, published in the 1950s, including WritingDegree Zero (1967a) and Mythologies (1973), are centrally concerned with the illusions of contemporary bourgeois culture, and particularly the bourgeois denial of the 'opacity' of language. Within contemporary culture, it is assumed generally that language is a neutral medium that the writer may use, without restriction, to express and communicate his or her ideas. This culture is concerned with verisimilitude, or the faithful and unbiased reproduction of an independent reality (both in visual representation and is verbal description). Barthes challenges these assumptions, arguing rather that language (or more properly writing — ecriture) is already bound up within particular social forms, and as such does not report an independent reality, but creates a reality. Different forms of writing bring with them 'realities', and crucially, realities that fuse together accounts of the sort of facts that exist in the world and evaluations of those facts. Because bourgeois culture denies this opacity (i.e. the fact that language creates or presupposes a reality), the value-laden and selective realities that are offered in language appear to be natural, and thus the way in which the world really is. It may be noted that Barthes' work on narrative, similarly, is concerned with the structural conventions that a story must obey, if, paradoxically, it is to appear to the reader as if it was unfolding, not according to a convention, but rather naturally (Barthes 1977b).

In Mythologies, in particular, Barthes analyses the way in which a second, 'mythological', level of meaning is added onto signs. The signs under investigation are not only linguistic signs, but also any carriers of meaning, including photographs and other visual images. Myth, for Barthes, works by allowing a particular image to reinforce our prejudices, making them appear to have universal validity. A particular image (or signifier) is fused with a value system (which, at this mythological level, is what is signified). Thus, for example, in Barthes' most famous example, the photograph of a French Negro soldier comes to reinforce the positive value and legitimacy of French imperialism. Myth works through the way in which the soldier is photographed (in this case, loyally saluting the French flag). Mythology hides nothing, but presents everything with a certain inflexion. Precisely because signifier and signified are fused, the value associations of the image are taken as self-evident and indeed natural.
Barthes' Elements of Semiology (1967b), written in the early 1960s, on the one hand begins to draw together the methodology of such semiological approaches, but on the other hand, and more importantly, begins to question the basis of semiology itself. He finds in semiological research a 'dream of scientificity'. That is to say, semiology, while allowing the critical approach to bourgeois culture described, still presupposes that it is capable of achieving some fixed point from which it can gain an objective, unbiased and undistorted view of reality. In orthodox semiology, that which is signified is assumed to preexist the act of signification (so that a signifier simply refers to some pre-existing reality). For Barthes, the signifier is now seen as creating the signified (just as writing creates reality). There is no access to reality independently of language, and because there is no neutral language, there can never be an account of how reality 'really' is. For literary criticism, as explored in Criticism and Truth (1987), this entails that there can be no objective or definitive interpretation of a work, nor can one assume that there is some author, as the originator of meaning, behind the text. Hence, Barthes posits 'The Death of the Author' (1977c) and also a shift 'From Work to Text' (1977d).

This shift, which in effect marks a shift from structuralism to poststructuralism, is exemplified in S/Z (1974). Barthes offers a close reading of Balzac's novella Sarrasine, in order to explicit the conventions (or codes) that govern its apparently naturalistic narrative. The crucial distinction that is posed is between a 'readerly' (or realist) text, that conforms to the conventions that a reader expects from a well-made narrative, and a 'writerly' text. The latter disrupts the realist narrative codes, and therefore makes the position of reader insecure. (Joyce's Finnegans Wake is the model of such texts.) The reader cannot passively consume the text with pleasure. In The Pleasure of the Text (1975) and in his final, more autobiographical and novelistic texts of the 1970s (1977e, 1978,1981), Barthes explores the difference between readerly and writerly in terms of the difference between pleasure (plaisir) and jouissance. If the readerly text gives pleasure in the comfort and security of reading, then the writerly text gives ecstatic 'enjoyment' (akin to the enjoyment of sexual orgasm). It is an enjoyment in the loss of subjectivity, and in the transgression of academic forms and conventions.
[AE]
Further reading: Culler 1983;Lavers 1982;Moriarty 1991;Sontag 1982b.

Get Set for Media and Cultural Studies

(Purvis, 2006: 88-89)

Cultural distinctions

Much of the historical and intellectual legacy which has informed the distinctions between high (or sometimes ‘official’) and popular culture is informed by the increasingly marketand commercial-led distinctions of the eighteenth century.When cultural goods and artefacts can be bought, sold and exchanged for money, then the more expensive the goods, the more cultural taste is endowed with the purchase and the purchaser. ‘Taste’ (what people judge as good or bad in culture) increasingly became a marker of social differentiation, allowing distinctions to be made not just on grounds of social class, but on how an individual in the class was able to talk about ‘culture’. But it is important to note that what, in the eighteenth century, the educated might have referred to as ‘vulgar’ or ‘low’ culture is today referred to as ‘popular’ culture; but it is also a culture whose importance to the understanding of the period cannot be underestimated. Similar distinctions are seen to mark the nineteenth century as well. Whilst the free municipal galleries, libraries and public reading rooms of the late nineteenth century increased working-class access to cultural output and literacy, so those with wealth and income maintained cultural distinctions by travelling to the galleries, exhibitions and sites of archaeological merit in Italy, France, Greece and Spain. In other words, in whichever way the cultural goods of a period are judged, the fact of the judgement perhaps says as much about the culture and its subjects more than the actual goods themselves.

Research into what audiences do with cultural products also suggests that the distinctions between high culture and popular culture continue to inform how ‘postmodern’ cultures are understood today. On the one hand, popular culture has been seen as something which underlines and affirms ‘things as they are’. Popular culture is not radical; it does not seek to question or change the status quo; and it is evidence of cultural decline. On the other hand, popular culture serves to endanger social cohesion, undermine the authority of the dominant group, and generally represents a threat to traditional ways of life. If only for these reasons, then, popular culture is surely worth further study. By situating these debates in relation to more detailed discussion of economics, politics, social history and cultural theory, so media and cultural studies degrees are in a position to confront the arguments about ‘Culture’ and popular culture.

FURTHER READING
Storey, J. (2001), Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction, 3rd edn, Harlow: Pearson Education; *http:// cwx.prenhall.com/bookbind/pubbooks/storey_ema/ (this also has exercises, self-assessments, and glossary of key terms).
Strinati, D. (2000), An Introduction to Studying Popular Culture, London
and New York: Routledge.
Williams, R. (1965), The Long Revolution, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Williams, R. (1988; 1976), Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and
Society, London: Fontana.