Searching for Cindy

Untitled #540, 2010/12. All rights Cindy Sherman

In 1992 a 26 year old me came across a giant psychosexual masterpiece Untitled, #257 by Cindy Sherman in the window of a Soho gallery. A dripping jewel of cum illuminated in the darkness; held in suspense by gravity and photography as it hovered above a gaping manaquin's mouth. It blew me away and infected me with one of my most treasured and complex memes. It was a £1000 then, a price that felt out of reach but also I was not brave enough even to own it. 'Owning' a Sherman in a feminist context is a fascinating prospect but it is a constant regret that I do not and now cannot possess even a bit of her.

The recent private view of an almost complete retrospective in London (the image described above is absent) gave me the opportunity to reconnect to the exquisite pain of that regret and brush up against her genius and courage in the hope that a little more might rub off.

The majority of the evening was spent searching for the actual Cindy Sherman in the multiple rooms of the National Portrait Gallery and although surrounded by monumental self portraits I was still not entirely sure whether I would recognise her. At one point all the women of a certain age could have been her. Eventually though I found a diminutive and humble human in a dress which could have been made from the same fabric as the wicked witch's ruby slippers.

Sherman's early introvert documentation are iconic tropes for any contemporary adolescent obsessively seeking understanding through the selfie. Hers have evolved over decades of dogmatic repetition into a thorough examination of persona, from the 'protector' of the young through experiments in cultural stereotype to an eventual realisation that all persona is a barrier to progress towards any real understanding of self. This theme builds through the exhibition as the work becomes increasingly surreal and less defined by anything as tangible as gender. 

The final rooms are potentially most baffling and I met two curators struggling with the enormity of defining Sherman's practice for upcoming presentations. My solution is to surrender to the lack of understanding and in so doing be free from the conventions of narrative and rationalisation. Through this filter I can see that Sherman has handed over the contents of her dressing-up box to the randomness of the universe, inserting these new personas into the primordial landscapes that hint at the Jungian ooze that we are formed from and ultimately return.

The exhibition but especially the discussion chaired by Bonnie Greer 'Imitations of Life' re-inspires the quest for knowledge in the hope that somehow it will assist in the alchemy that is the successful synergy of 'self' and work. Sherman is the mistress and poster girl for us all in our attempts to be free of persona as glass ceiling and her intimate explorations are the canvas onto which we project the different stages of our own anxiety. Adoption is my unique USP, my disability and superpower. My own relationship to the existential lack of certainty is my nature and allows for a confluence with other's, it is a useful skill in a photographer seeking understanding of self through the exploration of the lives of others. I am however less comfortable turning that objective gaze onto myself, that takes a different kind of courage. A self-portrait is like hearing my own voice played back, I do not recognise it and I struggle to like it.

Greer disrespects photography by suggesting Sherman transcends the medium. This is often said of any artist who manages to work successfully with it. Photography is such a difficult tool to work with to create original work as it is the most present of mediums. Results are compared and defined by the aesthetic rules of contemporary capitalist culture. Sherman like any artist has chosen her medium and is masterful in its use and she is undoubtedly a photographer. She is after all part of the generation that discovered photography as an art form in the 70's so eloquently defined by writers like Sontag. Each new generation since has re-discovered these lessons and possesses them as if they are new truths. Similarly with gender and sexual politics, Sherman reminds us that all we need to do is look back to recent history to find the same complex questions we are asking now. How amazing and courageous these artists were to feel the new power of the medium for the first time and dare to use it. I can only be in awe.

No Photography Allowed

As part of a road trip through the southern states I visited La Grange, Georgia. In 2017 it attracted press attention as the first town to officially apologize for the circumstances that led to the lynching of a young African American man, Austin Callaway in 1940. As part of the Equal Justice Initiative's 'Community Remembrance Project', soil from the sites of known lynchings was collected in special labelled memorial jars to be installed at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice.

‘In Lynching in America: Confronting the legacy of Racial Terror, the EJI documented 4400 racial terror Lynchings in 12 Southern States – and more than 300 in eight states outside the South – between 1877 to 1950. Most critically, Lynching reinforced a legacy of racial inequality that has never been adequately addressed.’

Lynching in America: Confronting the legacy of Racial Terror and hotel breakfast © Richard Ansett 2017

The soil collection for Austin Callaway's memorial jar had not yet taken place and before leaving for the states I requested that any descendants might be found and asked if they would participate in the collection as a specific event for the camera.

Arriving from the UK, racial politics feels very different in the US,  in many ways more progress has been made and even the unresolved issues between black and white feel closer to the surface. In Britain we are culturally less used to airing racial division so openly. We arguably avoided a US style civil war by massively compensating slave owners, funding the industrial revolution and we have unsuccessfully circumvented the conversation ever since. But even in the US there is a reticence to fully negotiate the minefield of racial tension and the EJI project recognises that contemporary generations are shaped by an emotional legacy associated with victim, perpetrator or bystander. The genius of the Community Remembrance Project recognises how these old wounds perpetuate continued  prejudice and division, damaging everyone.

When I visited the EJI offices in Montgomery, Alabama, the home of the civil rights movement, I was conscious of the monetary value of 'civil rights tourism' and in light of William. C. Anderson's article 'When a lynching memorial becomes a photo oppertunity' I can empathise with how behaviours more associated with tourism than commemoration are perceived as disrespectful. I photographed myself at the Rosa Parks bus stop, was photographed with the minister of Martin Luther King Jr's church and was even offered a haircut by his barber; At a time when tensions were rising in nearby Charlottesville, I sent a postcard of black prisoners to my partner in the UK with the standard sentiment and ironic 'Wish You Were Here'. There are many people on holiday visiting the sites on the civil rights trail offering opportunities for the virtue signalling selfie as valuable currency for our social media feeds. I can see that a form of 'Disneyfication' of the black struggle has occurred in making the suffering more palatable to the white visitor so as not to alienate and in that there is a danger of an empathic disconnect from the very demographic trying to be reached in any re-education process. 

Selfie with Lynching Memorial Marker, La Grange, GA, USA

However the overall approach across all the sites is an attempt to be educational, there was a generous welcome at MLK's church and I felt I was a valued guest in someone else's history and the minister pulled no punches in reminding our group tour that the oppression and inaction against black people was by 'white folks'. Surrounded by the safe space created by the love and forgiveness of the pastor there was a palpable sense of shame I faced in that moment at odds with an otherwise glorious narrative of British colonialism and white history that had an early influence on my racial and cultural identity. A confidence built on these foundations is racist.

There is an art to remembrance; in the UK we have our ostensibly conservative and austere permanent memorials to heroic sacrifice in 'victory' but we have no significant monuments to any collective guilt or moral failure defining our past as less than glorious. Germany, crushed and defeated twice and re-born, has embraced another form of national commemoration and Berlin especially has monumentalised the lessons of humanity born from defeat and hubris (my favourite is the Room of Silence at the Brandenburg Gate). But in re-framing the evidence the UK can be considered as equally defeated; the bullet holes in the walls at Amritsar are a more fitting testimony and potentially more valuable to the national character than any tribute to the glorious dead defending the empire.

Bullet Holes in the walls at Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar, Punjab. Image subject to © .

The most successful memorial as visitor centre and museum I have seen is Oradour-sur-Glane, a village in France and the site of destruction and massacre of the population by the German army. On the instructions of Charles de Gaule it was sealed off to preserve the evidence of the atrocity as it had occurred. On arrival one is directed through an underground tunnel from the modern world into the heart of the deserted original village. Crucially the visitor is instructed on appropriate behavior including, no dogs, no photography or filming and no food or drink. With less distraction the silence encourages a presence to the terrors and increases the chance of empathy.

A white tourist's lack of empathy epitomised by the ubiquitous selfie at a memorial to black suffering directly as a consequence of white oppression is perceived as disrespectful in William.C. Anderson's article. The selfie defined arguably as only casual narcissism and photography's diminished power and importance by the vast numbers of digital images created can be argued as devaluing of any subject. In the context of the US civil rights movement, the contemporary snaps at a memorial to the subjugation and murder by a previous generation who thought so little of the victims that they photographed them as entertainment and were produced as postcards is darkly ironic. Mr Anderson's perfectly erudite description of the act as the ‘rigorous documentation of their own evil’ might be equivalent to the US army selfies with torture victims at Abu Graib.

Abu Ghraib selfies © Unknown

As part of my photographic project 'Lynching in America' I have included some abstracts of the soils in the jars as a typology to emphasise the scale and geography but my main focus is in the documentation of the simple, intimate action by the direct descendants Frances and Walter of the murdered boy Austin Callaway. This documentation of the collection of soil at the site of his lynching whilst conventional in appearance is not intended as a conventional editorial, photojournalistic observation.

Frances and Walter collecting soil for the EJI memorial jar © Richard Ansett 2017

Soil from the site of the lynching of Austin Callaway © Richard Ansett 2017

Entering the unmarked woodland glade and recording the events at the site of the lynching of Austin Callaway with his descendants Frances and Walter, my actions as a white photographer could be compared to a continuation of the damaging legacy of recording mass murder as entertainment and in this re-enactment I am a valid participant in the action equal to the subjects in a process of reconciliation. Any act of reconciliation requires the presence of all parties and I am welcome and present behind the camera. 

This event whilst staged for the camera is a collaboration and a genuine act and is not just between myself Frances and Walter but the result of negotiations with a huge number of other invested people from the La Grange community, black and white, church, police and state. Understanding of photography is transformed from a conventional document of complicity to murder and oppression, to its antithesis. It is the catalyst for healing and a search for truth. As the subject, the experience of being seen and recorded can feel personally valuable and in this moment Frances and Walter's lives are recognised as valuable to this process, very different to how the mob must have viewed Austin Callaway in 1940.

At the time of documenting our quiet act of truth and reconciliation, the riots of Charlottesville were in full swing and drawing the media gaze with the burning torches and chants of "Blood and Soil".

*The apology was not for the lynching but for the failure to protect Callaway from being taken from the police station cell by 6 white men and murdered in nearby woods. One indication perhaps of inherent racial bias and 'white saviours syndrome' is that the much-respected white Police chief who offered the original apology became the centre of the media story eclipsing the black community’s courage in its willingness to accept the apology and the hard work of the Equal Justice Initiative led by Bryon Stevenson for inspiring the entire process.

**There is the matter of the colonial gaze as an accidental inherent bias of the white documentary photographer as an ‘invested observer’ and obstruction to the fair and objective representation of any event . There is a responsibility on a contemporary photographer seeking documentary truth to at least have an awareness of this legacy..

This blog is developed from a response to 'When a Lynching Memorial Becomes a Photo Opportunity' - William. C. Anderson 

Edvard Munch Selfie

Edvard Munch Selfie at clinic being treated for anxiety 1908 "à_la_Marat"

Selfie with Lenin

It pretty hot in Ukraine in the Summer; as hot as it is cold in the winter. The only shade in Donetsk's Lenin Square, is in the shadow of the monumental statue of Lenin himself. You cannot sit there too long otherwise the police move you on but it was often the place where I met my assistant, translator, producer, all round super woman Yulya Shato during the IZOLYATSIA residency. I am thinking of all my great friends in Ukraine, the world is watching.

Selfie in the Shadow of Lenin, Donetsk, UKR © Richard Ansett 2011

Shadow of Lenin, Donetsk, UKR © Richard Ansett 2011

Selfie with Lenin, Donetsk, Ukraine © Richard Ansett 2011