Representing Otherness

A letter to Clair Rees curator of 1001 critical Days Tomorrow;s Child after a discussion over breakfast at The Wolseley 09/01/2017

Dear Clair,

an answer to your question "How do you represent mental health with photography?"

There is a danger of me banging the same old drum here for anyone that knows me well but...

The filter through which we as audience view the world and ‘read’ photography is influenced primarily by the aesthetics of the market place as well as an editorial mindset represented by a linear narrative, so when we are presented with work that sits outside of this, it is either rejected or we attempt to pigeon hole the work to subjugate any personal responsibility for the content. So very often work where the parameters of viewing is ‘less normative’* can be misinterpreted as cynical, cruel, humorous, weird, crazy, exploitative or perhaps just bad. Arbus' work is a great example of being completely misunderstood, perhaps even deliberately, by well known writers, critics and curators. But in her exploration of the world, she defined her subjects as ‘aristocratic freaks’ as she attempted to find a tribe to ‘belong’ to, although ultimately she was unable to square the circle of existential loneliness.

'Aristocratic freaks’ feels a little dated in my multicultural mindset, the implication of a freak or queer is that the subject sits outside of normal definitions, so regardless of any positive fashionable spin, it is surrendering to a conservative notion of normal and excludes rather than includes as an act of self harm if we define ourselves in this way. So in the representation of disability but especially of mental health the camera’s brutal realist eye exposes the nature of the illness and how it manipulates the body as it presents itself to society, stripped of any form of romantic and patronising idealism, therefore ironically demanding acceptance from society on the subject's terms!

I have attached two links to two series, one representing physical disability as a triptych of Alan who has Cerebral Palsy and a sequence (inspired by the cool scientific observations of the Muybridge collotype) of a young man with mental health issues in a day centre in the Dombass region of East Ukraine, exercising for the camera.

http://richardansett.com/gallery/work-in-series/man-exercising-for-the-camera/#anonymous_element_1

http://richardansett.com/gallery/work-in-series/man-with-cerebral-palsy/

As i mentioned briefly earlier, the camera can record 'clues' to a subject mindset if we strip away a need to impose an 'opinion' or even sympathy in the pursuit of a subject's representation; persona, dress, body language, the nuance of expression and the state of our environment are all indications of how a unique world has been formed as protection from the 'hell of other people' (sic) and society.

I refuse to accept any sense of failure in this approach, I am convinced and determined by the democratic nature of the New Objectivist approach in the fair representation of all members of society as equal and worthy of celebration and it is connected to the ideas of moral relativism that we touched on this morning over breakfast; that there are some indisputable truths within and beyond our awareness and certainly out of reach of our clumsy attempts to define our existence.

My work now is increasingly focused on images that ambivalently explore our relationship to reality truth rather than present any subject in terms that might arrogantly interpret the lives of others kindly or otherwise. We can never fully know or understand the life of another person and it is the height of hubris to represent our work as truthful. Our works are merely simple childish sketches, like cave paintings; most valuable as representations of our relationship to others and therefore more revealing and autobiographical.

*I am  loathed to use the word ‘original’ as I was recently reading an Elias Canetti essay that partly defined it in these terms, “ Originality, must not be demanded. The person (sic) who wants to have it will never have it. And the conceited and well-contrived clowneries that some people have served up in order to count as original are still in our embarrassed memories."

Man Exercising for the Camera, Ukraine  (from sequence) © Richard Ansett

Alan in his Bedroom Rotating for the Camera (from sequence) © Richard Ansett

Dignity

In the garden of a hospital in Ukraine I met a boy who had been attacked by a dog, the physical scarring on his face equalled only by a silent communication of a deeper emotional damage. The unsympathetic gaze of the camera had accidentally exposed the most tender and vulnerable elements of his world in that moment.

I am attracted to any altered state that explores the boundaries of what might be considered normal and in the above example, the boy's emotional damage inspired an investigation of other forms, including learning difficulty and mental illness, as an experiment into how these conditions might represent themselves to a camera under similar conditions.

Before I met the charity that supports the parents of the autistic children that led to the final exhibition ‘Boys in a City Park’, I investigated some other groups caring for young people with varying degrees of mental health, as well as those with Cerebral Palsy. In photographing these young people I was aware of a more brutal and unrepresentative facsimile of their lives when they were exposed to the same objectification and most importantly, I noticed how these representations did not fit into the normative parameters through which we have become accustomed to reading the emotions in photographs.

With Down syndrome the camera saw the condition as a mask to the emotions and as Susan Sontag said most cruelly of Diane Arbus’s work, “When you photograph a dwarf, you don’t see majesty, you just see a dwarf.” I see this now as less shocking in the context of my contemporary experience. I interpret it as more of a commentary of societal parameters, an observation of our inability to ‘see’ those, who are not communicating in a way we can so easily interpret.

Photographing subjects with cerebral palsy or motor-neuron disease presents a unique issue, as the condition is literally a mask to the trapped human being inside a body that won’t behave itself. In recording the subject response with a camera, I cannot trust the physical signs that would reflect emotions in an able bodied person. Not only this but further, during an assignment at a college for disabled young people, I found myself deeply conflicted as I was only comfortable when recording the muscle movements in the face of a subject, Lewis, that would represent him to a normative audience in a palatable way. Photographing Professor Stephen Hawking more recently offered up a similar dilemma; I found myself seeking some semblance of emotional contact that would indicate that within this extraordinary and almost entirely useless frame was a person that we could relate to as normal let alone a genius.

To move perhaps towards a more equitable representation, I feel now that the way to represent subjects, ironically, can only be through the very objectification that feels disrespectful; to not compensate for the expectations of a pitying and patronizing (if well meaning) majority. To do this many compositional rules of aesthetics are not only rendered obsolete but are re-framed as prejudicial and limiting.

Protecting one's dignity or of those less able to fight independently for their own, is a common expectation rooted in a fear of being primarily defined by the surface but it denies the camera an opportunity to capture what is the reality of our lives. Accepting these stereotypical representations based on historical rules is self-limiting, it is our prejudice projected harmfully onto the subject and returned to us as audience. (It is a moral dilemma we are less concerned about in the representation of other, non Western, cultures).

As I applied a version of objectivity to the subjects of one day centre for young adults with learning difficulties in Ukraine, I remember feeling an overwhelming confluence with Diane Arbus, I felt possessed by her spirit, like I was walking in her shoes, I was her and I didn’t like it. It felt like a cold and brutal world, devoid of empathy, driven by the pursuit of an image and a loneliness satiated only by a need to belong to a tribe of 'aristocratic' freaks. 4 years later, as I observe through my camera, a child who cannot breath without needing the mucus to be constantly sucked from her airways by her mother, I realise that I am seeking to record her life as part of the whole, not as a celebration of a mutated Arbus aristocrat on the periphery of the ordinary.

This is a line that must be faced and crossed not just because it is there (deliberately at odds with all compassionate cultural instinct) but in the capture the images are a record reported back to the world of a less explored but equally valid universe. Resulting images are in their nature a debate of the parameters through which we judge each other and are an aggressive challenge to the stereotypical conventions through which society is viewed. The brutality is only relative to the blandness and cowardice of conventional representation.

Lewis, National Star College, England © Richard Ansett

Man with learning difficulties exercising for the camera, Ukraine © Richard Ansett

Untitled, Diane Arbus