Transgressions: The book Review

From where I stand in my remote art world desert I can see small oases of recognition and influence scattered here and there in the distance.  Although from so far away they look like bumps, easy to ignore, many are actually mountains of importance, pinnacles of authority and power.  For the intrepid artist / traveler / climber who ventures to visit, they can offer respite from the arduous quest, food for thought, and soothing pools of clarity in which to relax.

The oasis inhabitants, the lucky few, deemed worthy of residency by the local authority, are hired as guides and teachers.  They bask in the security of belonging while the visitor must move on after their experience is over.  If the trekker does not abandon their quest, with a little luck they too may eventually find a spot on a less visited oasis where a few campsites have become available.  Given the systemic scarcity of oasis lodging, however, residents cannot take their place for granted and must learn to bow and scrape, grateful for any scraps tossed their way and hopeful for sustained patronage.

The scenario above may sound amusing (or not), but to me it roughly describes what I see in the art world.  Part hunger games, part pyramid scheme.  A lot of hungry artist mouths to feed, a lot of art being produced, but limited bandwidth and few locations – real, virtual, or metaphorical – where work can be spotlit and given its due.

A case in point is my photobook Transgressions.  It was not granted access to any of the better-known oases of commerce or criticism.  No need to ask.  No room at the inn for you.  We do not serve your kind here.

In an appropriately transgressive spirit of vengeance, I figure I may as well set up a spotlight and write my own book review.  Besides being fun, it may even be useful if in it I mention things about the work that might escape the attention of the casual viewer.

When I think about art, I like the framework offered by Robert Adams.  He suggests we answer three questions:  what is the art doing or trying to do, does it do it, and was it worth it.

At a basic level one can look at the images in Transgressions and categorize them by technique, as the text on the back cover mentions “a variety of techniques” and the afterword mentions “several distinct ways of working.”  We also know that the images are cut-out, hand-manipulated photographs from a time before digital photography. 

So let’s dig in. 

The first four photographs are black and white and have blank white spaces where part of the picture has been removed.  The parts of the photograph that are blank often correspond to lines, forms, and shapes in the composition.  But sometimes the blank spaces are seemingly random or playful or whimsical, however, although in all cases their white, abstract two dimensional-ness contrasts with and stands in tension with the three-dimensional pictorial reality of the represented scene.  The cut-out forms vary considerably in size and number, leaving more or less of the original photograph.

In images 3 and 4 the figures are more like silhouettes.  The cut-out forms are crude and dramatic and dynamic in image 3 and there is obvious tension between the flat shapes on the surface of the image and some hints of three-dimensional depth.

Image 5 is the same photographs as image 4, a young man at a desk or counter, but in image 5 his head has been removed and placed to the side and a face has been added to the blank rectangle where it used to be.  What might that mean, to cut off someone’s head?  We will consider meaning below, but for now let’s continue our inventory of techniques.

Next, images 6, 7, and 8 are in color, but colors that in some parts are off.  The three are seemingly related street scenes with added bits of shared imagery.  For example, images 6 and 8 share a couple of photo pieces and 7 and 8 both incorporate the same photo.  Although there are cut-outs, the images do not incorporate blank white spaces but instead are collages that function as a group.

So far we have been presented with a theme with variations, and now a new theme using collage and color has been introduced.  Images are one to a page or two-page spreads with related photographs in the two panels.  As we continue in the book we will see several more themes and variations introduced and developed.

Image 9 seems to be a street scene with blank white cut-out forms that seem mostly to follow the lines and forms in the scene.  Compared to the previous images, however, the blank spaces are quite small, and the overall effect is of movement, busy, rough, uneven, and chaotic – pictorial reality dissolved by an onslaught of small geometric voids.

Images 10 and 11 on facing pages are related.  In the darkroom, cut-out image 11 has been used as a template to expose photo paper to reveal its abstract cut-out patterns:  busy, rhythmic, almost obsessive.  In image 11 itself we see a street scene eaten up by vengeful void-bots, the remaining image parts hovering in a state of tension between two and three dimensional pictorial reality, as if the artist was trying to see how much structure could be removed without everything collapsing.

Images 12 and 13 on the next two facing pages offer a related pair as well.  Again the first image results from use of the cut-out image as a template to expose photo paper, and it turns image 12 into ghostly silhouette of image 13, a man seemingly consumed by sharp bits of void.  For the record, image 12 is a double exposure that has been cut out.  Gothic warrior or doomed teen, victim of witchcraft or wizardry, we can only speculate.

Image 14 is a singleton, with a limited number of floating knife-like cut-out blanks interfering with our reading of the pictorial space.  But in this image we see extensive desultory graffiti-like doodling with a pen as well.

Images 15, 16, and 17, one to a page, are scenes with a more limited number of white cut-out spaces invading the pictorial space, again creating tension between flatness and depth, edge and object, texture and blank.

The remaining images in the book, numbers 18 through 30, employ collage techniques.  Photos are cut and spaces created and other photos, related or unrelated, are fused on or under them.

In image 18 a chunk of street from a high perspective opens like a window slapped onto a related street scene from a contrasting perspective.  Splat.  You can hear the impact of concrete hitting concrete.

Images 19, 20, and 21 present a small urban playground / park in Marseille.  In image 19 the silence and emptiness of the sunlit space contrasts with the phony-baloney bonhomie of the billboard radio hosts, sliced up and disrespected in the background.

Images 20 and 21 are the same frontal, formal image of the park in two contrasting versions, on the left with large white cut-out blanks and on the right superimposed over a hilly vineyard, the lines of its landscape blending into the surrounding urban geography and seemingly opening a window into the past.

Images 22 and 23 juxtapose two distinct places, an outdoor place with an indoor figure visible behind or inside it.

Images 24 through 27 juxtapose and hold in tension two related versions of the same scene, the one contradicting but also complementing the other.  This is TRUE / NOT TRUE! This is REAL / NOT REAL! they seem to shout.

The last three images are collaged in the form of donuts, reality donuts, three or four time / place levels telescoped together into a single visual organism floating somewhere in space.

There is a lot to unpack on a technical level even with only 30 images…  Hopefully you will agree that the book fulfills its statement of purpose as a series or variety of techniques.  The sequencing moves along and does not get bogged down with repetition.  You turn the page and see a twist, an innovative element added to the conversation, a slightly different way of working. 

Can we say that the book adds something new to the contemporary photographic conversation given its novel use of photographs, razor blades, and X-acto knives, and this in the pre-digital age, forty-plus years ago, between 1979 and 1982?  I hope so.

A second way to answer the question of what is the art doing / trying to do is to decode the images using the “lyricism, satire, and spleen” suggestion from the back cover.

Here I should note that even though I created the images I do not necessarily know what they mean.  Some of them mystify me to this day even though I made them some forty-odd years ago.  But since I know generally what the pictures are about I can offer clues to help decipher some of them.  For example, if you go through the images you can look and decide if what you see is lyricism, satire, or spleen, or maybe just plain vanilla existential angst.  Art like life can be messy and does not always fit in neat categories.

For me, image 1 is definitely satire.  I cut out that silly kid’s brain to show that his head was empty.  The rest was the excitement of taking a razor blade and violating the surface of a perfectly good print.  Images 4 and 5 for me also involve satire.

The color series, images 6, 7, and 8 are playful, lyrical, and melancholic, maybe with a hint of humor. 

Image 9 is punk infused lyricism in its messy, manic playfulness.   Ditto for image 11 although it is not as messy.  Jazz instead of punk.

The double exposure portrait image number 15 is spooky – a bit cliché perhaps but also gnarly, not-trying-to-be-pretty, I-don’t-give-a-flying-French-fart badass.  My high school classmate Craig decomposing, burning in Hell, torched by Grace, infused with super powers and coming to the rescue, or perhaps all of the above.

Skipping ahead, image 22, Isabelle smoking a cigarette in our apartment in Marseille, for me is definitely spleen, a dark cage with chunks of black in the holes behind it.  This image and the next one of Roland in a car work like Surrealism.  The thing is what you see but it is also something else.  You are in one place but also another place.  Your mind is there but not there but someplace else.

In pictures 23 and 24, the contrasting / complementary views of Serge, and 25 (the Corsican math teacher whose name I forget) I see notes of satire, plus commentary on the truthfulness of photographs, plus perhaps a lesson on the psychology of portraiture, plus I better stop there…

The last three images, my reality donuts, are melancholic.  They include slices of France and slices of home here in the U.S.  The melancholy is of nostalgia, of missing something, of longing to be somewhere else, of not being able to exist in two places at once.

Getting back to Robert Adam’s three questions, the last question to answer is, was it worth it?  This is the question reviewers try to avoid answering because it involves putting your cards on the table.  You have to say why it was worth it and defend your choice. 

My answer of course is yes.  I invested time, tears, and treasure to make the book happen, first of all by holding onto the dummy I created in the early 1980s and revising it several times over the decades, and then more recently by shepherding it though the fraught and perilous process of book production.  This does not necessarily mean the images merit our attention, of course.  But for me at least these images have staying power and are memorable, potent packages of feeling and form. 

I am pleased with the images as well as the look and quality of the resulting book.  Thanks to my designer Monica and to Ben from Edition One. 

I like Transgressions and I hope you do too.