Every image seen is already your image. You're sight is your possession of the world. Seeing is the seeing of something seen, seeing. Seeing is an encounter of reading, writing, instrumentality; it's an event. The encounter is the event. Here, the artist brings the image event knowingly into the familiar instrumentality of the web. See the image, read the tags, read the image, see the tags.
What is the caption to the image, the image to the caption? What are these tags? All these words?
Is this image staged? What's staged? The photograph in the image, or the photograph inside the form factor? Is it fiction, non-fiction? Where is the fiction, the non-fiction? Posed, unposed? Found? Constructed? It's literature.
The image as an event of the archive. The archive constitutes the image event. The image already reading. The reading event domesticated, gamed, played, situating the recording event. Seeing as a recording event always an event of re-recording.
Is this an image of a form factor, something you'd see on del.ic.ious, on flickr, in a digital photo archive?
Are we looking at a film still, done in photoshop? Is the second man without the phone the double of the man with the phone?
What is this tagged perverse? It's primal, it's theatrical, it's staged, so it says. What is in front of us here?
Not only do we see this image, but we also see its being seen. Somebody is worked into this image by categorizing (which is a type of seeing) it as fiction, literature, theatrical movement, etc. Presumably the same somebody sees themes ranging from the psychological to the mathematical. What is so important about these categories and themes? The components of the lists detract from the importance of making such distinctions, since they are so broad that they could reflect almost any image. My point is that these categories and themes are not comparable to Aristotle's four causes that distinguish any thing from every other thing; instead, they suggest a type of internal framing of the overall image that puts Aristotle's causes outside the scope.
But let's not forget the colorful part of the image -- the part that seems to be the subject of the words. To look at this image is to participate in the event of seeing. Like any human event, that of seeing can be life changing or inconsequential. It depends on the event. The particular event that involves this image slows down the increasingly quick pace of the financial world. It is a freeze frame. But it is also purported to be a "staged photo." What are the effects of staging this photo? Who, if anybody, is the beneficiary of this contrivance?
I am not interested in what this "staged photo" says about anything. It is no authority (unless artist/uploader Marc Lafia is and I am simply unaware). I am interested in its effects because one need not be an authority to have important or interesting effects. So what are the effects? The freeze frame slowing down re-presents the financial world as an even faster place.
But if Aristotle's four causes are irrelevant to this image, then what does that say about its ability to effect anything that can have the four causes?
So many frames within a frame! Each man has three computer frames in front of him, and there are many frames within the frame of the computer. The light fixtures above replicate frames set amongst the many frames of the tiled ceiling. Then there are the frames of the glasses that the man is holding and another man behind him is wearing. In the latter case, the man is looking through frames (glasses) at a frame within the frame of the computer. The technology is so pervasive. The ratio of computers to man is 3:1 and each man’s hand is holding a telephone. This image focuses on the technology, even if the technology does not take center stage, and not on man.
Light streams in through the windows, creating an ethereal glow that illuminates this profanity: The self-serving nature of human capitalism is captured, framed, posed, captured and framed again. And it is all calculated. I wonder how well the central character can see without his glasses... Would he see us seeing him?
This image is a compact, pre-analyzed, pre-scripted, and pre-interpreted. The photograph is not operating in a constant middle, the way it would have without its added "themes," now it's operating at an end. It's dying a little. We're given a title, we're told it is staged and in NYC, we're given some themes to pontificate about should we have to analyze this image in a blog, and we're given the name of the artist. We know nothing has been left to chance in the photograph and thanks to the added words, now nothing is left to chance in viewing the photograph. Like the business man in his cubicle, this image is afraid of chance, hesitant to venture outside of the constituted norm, comfortable with a monochromatic setting. The setting is hectic, but it's also just another day as a broker.
The words change and inform the viewing experience of the photograph, the author is not dead here, but the image has lost a little bit of its vitality, a little bit of its mystery. The adjectives provided under the "Themes" heading steal the potential the viewer may have had to conjure them up him/herself. The words rob the viewer of an unadulterated viewing experience, and I think it could have been good.
There is a Nabokovian author/interpreter complex germinating not only in the detailed annotations under the image, but even on this message board. How does one interpret an image already interpreted by its author? Is meta-interpretation the next move in the post narrative world? And what are the roles of the author and the interpreter? Is the author reliable even of his own artistic creation, or does his artistic creation extend beyond even his own authority? Do I focus on Marc Laffia’s hand that supposedly snapped a staged shot of financial frenzy, the hand that typed the blurbs (artist, category, themes) about the photo and its author, or the hand of Marc Ruffian on the message board talking about his own seeing? Does the author have the rights to what he instrumentally captured via a mechanical medium of the camera? Isn’t he but the framer of the camera’s retina? A mere organizer and not a prophet, whether the material be visual or linguistic? These retorts all result from regressing to a search for some genesis in a hermeneutic circle of cat and mouse; sniffing out an origin from a detached whiff instead of jumping inside the text itself. The photographer sees through a lens and is not the lens itself, so all lenses are play for my own. The mediums of imagery and language are not unilateral and the subtext Marc Laffia included with the picture is an extension of the picture. The author’s categorical profile, being submitted by himself, may be just as staged as the photo itself: a narrative pretending to be reality; and the author’s diligent first response on this class’s message-board (Hi Marc!), perhaps may be (whiff whiff) an imposter playing the part of author. So what is posed, who is posing, what is real and virtual, unmasked or charlatan, become all fodder for the gullible critic prone to hasty generalizations and adhering to authorial opinions. In reality, or faux-reality, the narrative, like the narrator, being themselves tricksters in an act, lend their stage for a new character to not rip down the curtain, but to join in the performance: front and center emerges the interpreter from the shadows.
Can an image ever be separated from its means of production? Isn't an image, after all, an act of imaging, an act of taking up and making sense of? There is no such thing as the seen; there is only seeing.
What is so very odd about this image is that it is cut through with so many angles, so many teases—yes, it's a tease of teases. It is stretched this way and that; it goes this way and that.
Do the themes and names modify the "image"? Or does the image modify the words and themes? Where do we look? How do we make sense of this thing that is over run with sense?
This image spilleth over.
In some sense, perhaps, this is the image of seeing—the themes and words and graphics are all seeing each other and seeing us seeing them. It is like a Burroughs shot gun painting but with words and concepts, not just paint.
A network of buzzing connections deprived of a center or source. Patches of light with no sun in sight. Stacks of computers live to access the webs of the world. People pop up and fizzle into the background. The man standing, the boss perhaps, is replaceable, a cheap replica. Status and hierarchy hold no weight; the people's positions are purely to treat the eye. Voices trickle out of machines, life funnels through screens, the future is unfurling right here right now on the surface.
Categories and themes sometimes act as readymade paths to the core, but here they amplify possibilities into a secondary plexus. Each word creates a new tint, a new spin, on the already purring web-machine. Any sort of paramount meaning or idea trying to stand out against the whispering ways of understanding struggling to be heard, to get their chance to state their case. Only one category has a straight shot answer: Artist: Marc Lafia. Yet this isn't an answer at all. Marc Lafia, as strange a character as the mystery voices traveling through the telephone wires, is fragmentized into letters and sounds floating with the words, wires, suits, and screens around it in a mesh of future possibilities.
This would be a relativly easy image to narravtize, especially in light of recent events,it looks as if it could be torn from the fron of any number of periodicals. But the narrative which jumps easily out at the viewer is not interesting. This image is interesting in its portrail of space. The room seems to continue beyond the edges of the image, there is no end to it just a horizon. Part of this is the quality of the light in the image, the bright white walls and florecent lighting. This gives the image a barren quality despite the fact that it is full of action and stuff. Also despite the light in te image it is cool, the brightness doesn't lend warmth to the image. This may also be because of the sunken apperance of the central figures eyes. The severe look lends itself to institutional cold.
The artist structures the viewing of this image with the words he puts down. This structure is indeed a limit. It limits our interpretation. Interesting enough this structure, this limit is defined by words such as formless and overflowing. But also mathematical. Mathematical and formless? Ironic. Do these words refer to the image or to themselves? The words are concepts expressed in the image: conceptual. The words are not necessarily separate from the image, commenting on it. It is a unified experience. The artist has created a combined experience of image and words which overwhelms the viewer in a confusion of combination, overlap, and progression
This image seems to me to be the closest thing to a scene out of a modern movie that we have commented on thus far. Sure, there is a ton of action happening and all sorts of drama portrayed here. But this action scene does not provoke any mind-blowing thoughts for me.
After seeing such strange things in this class, this one pales in comparison. I feel like it leaves nothing to question. It is shallow, it is cliched.
The image is made by words, making people stand this way and that, so the subjects form an image with props and bodies, and then the words come back and straighten things up, preparing for the shutter *click*.
At first, this image appeared to be dictating an interpretation or a seeing of itself. However, after this initial reaction, I began looking at the interaction between these words and the image. How the image inflected the words how the words inflected the image.
These words are, in a sense, still dictating, but this framing is not strict.
we have both "fiction" and "nonfiction"
Placed not in a category, but in a continuum.
*The number of categories/ themes etc, are sort of jumbled, not necessarily opposed. The jumble is reminiscent of business of the photograph.
"mathematical" and "visceral"? Who knew these things could go together?
Who knew the top half and the lower half, these words and photograph, could make IMAGE?
There are numerous zones of activity in this image. Each person appears to be contained in an invisible bubble in which they are inseparable from their phones and computers. It's as if everyone had cubicles dividing them from one another, but the cubicle walls were somehow subtracted from the image. A great deal of frustration and anxiety is also visible in the faces and postures of the individuals in the image, but the source of this emotion is not visible. The overall environment in the image appears hostile, but the individuals don't appear to interact. All are frustrated but the frustration arises from a series of individual sources that do not build upon each other. The hostile environment of the room is only created when these individual spheres of activity are taken in together.
This is far and away the most complex image we've looked at. Why? Because it cannot simply be read by resorting to affect, to experience.
This image interrogates its own means of production AND of processing.
Most conspicuously, it is curious to me that people image the text to inflect the image. Might the text be an image on its own? Might the image inflect the text? This image is such an overwhelmingly complex network of concepts and affect.
What does "staged photo" even mean? In what sense is this staged? What, precisely, was staged?
The image along with all the words below it form this one complete picture. Are all the themes listed simultaneously present in the image? Or are they all just possible themes, only a few are present at a time? The themes listed are mere words; the image above embodies these words and bring them to the foreground. The image is far reaching. It at once can be categorized as fiction and non fiction and it can be simultaneously mathematical and perverse. There are so many events happening in this image that it's impossible to label just one all inclusive theme and category for it. A viewer is always seeing this image and likewise a plethora of themes and categories are being seen.
This image is very specific in a way that is very recognizable. It even has a title, categories and themes. This image is focused upon that yelling broker and all his surroundings re-affirm those themes. But was this intentional? Is it asking to break away from those texts and words and to take up the entire image as a whole? Do those texts reflect on image and the image to the text? This image asks not to just look at the image then read the text or read the text and look at the image but to read the entire thing as a whole. There’s nothing to be dismissed. The white background for the text is as much as significant as those lights and ceilings. Everything is seeing in this image. The texts points away from its self in a way that is ‘anything but, those categories, themes, and title.’ But at the same time, it points to itself as an image.
What does the caption do to the image? Does it explain the image? The caption seems to narrativize the image, giving it a perspective which it might not otherwise have. I wouldn’t have so clearly known what this image was without the caption; I wouldn’t have necessarily known it was staged. Is this a good thing that I now know without even having to take a closer look? This image seems to depict something real, yet the caption seems to negate that realism. Labeling it as “fiction,” and announcing that it has been staged, the caption takes away the sense of the real that this image had. Does an image have to depict a real event to be real then?
There is a strange symmetry to the image. It can be divided down the middle, and the two halves would almost be mirror reflections of each other, at least as far as the positions of the standing men are. The image also adheres to a traditional two-point perspective, which is centered with the man in the middle. This also fits into the reflection. The angles at which we see the three standing men also carry the effect of mirrors. The two men that are farther back might as well be reflections of the man in the center with mirrors that have been placed at perpendicular angles behind the center man. The man on the left has his head turned as the center man's reflection in the mirror was be. The man on the right is also at the expected angle that the center man's back reflection would be. The caption on the bottom, "Everyman and his broker," also gives a feeling of self-reflection. "Everyman" can easily be seen as "every man," making this picture a mirror reflection of the viewer, who is a member of the category "every man" and probably just as angry as the brokers in the mirror. There are, nevertheless, obvious non-reflective aspects of the image. All the aforementioned reflections are imperfect, and there are many aspects that disappear or are altered in the reflections. The image hints at the presence of mirrors, but it is obvious that there are no mirrors, as all the reflections are not really perfect mirror reflections.
There are a lot of screens: computer screens, faces, the screens of the front man’s glasses, the door, and the illuminated white screens on the ceiling. The positioning of the viewer is slightly on top of the computer monitor, allowing her to see many screens. All of the screens are different, giving the viewer the option of exploring a multitude of screens. This puts the viewer in a relationship which is constantly changing. The viewer has to rethink where she is and what screens to focus on.
Piercing face...the site of the inhuman within and mixed up with the human. Flickering square flourescent lights and computer screens are visual confetti to the sharp, stark suits and slick hair.
The descriptions are another great touch to all the other touches...just as much a paint stroke as anything else, they tug at my thoughts and perceptions of this site of happening. Frozen and eventful, each word triggers another shot-theatrical, fiction, spectral...they're all different ways of seeing the same complex thing.
This image plays with theatricality and poses in so many different ways. It cannot be characterized as a work that falls under the category of either the performing arts or the visual arts, it is both, a "staged photo". This image is not singular either, with every theme it professes to have a different image is seen. This image is playful, it does not take itself too seriously.
The all encompassing cliche image. Not only is it cliche but it needs to promote how cliche it is with a description. The affect of the man appears to be composed, contrived adding in affect, a new affect. One that is totally void of actually believing this man's stress induced facial patterns, and leaning towards laughter of "oh, how one must act out that expression". Funny how far people go to create an affect and how easy it is for them to fail.
The room is impersonal and blank. The most notable features in the frame are the structures. Like the tiles on the ceiling, the rows of computer monitors running parallel with the unhappy men attached to their phones. In their matching uniforms they form a modern assembly line. Plastic receptors mediate the most intimate of stressful deliberations. Even though they can not be seen by the "clients" they speak to, it is necessary to stand up from time to time to get their point across.
Everyman and his Broker. If this “staged photo” just had its title it would be representation. Marc Lafia, we would have to argue, would be commenting on something about New York brokers, or some such nonsense. However, the introduction of categories and themes calls representation into question. Perhaps the photo isn’t even staged at all. The themes and categories listed are disjuncts, but they sit below this image as conjuncts to which we might apply to the image, were it to represent. But how does an image ever represent? The artist or the critic or the lazy reader invents a rule, and argues that the image conforms to the rule. The representational image, by this method, is correct, contains the possibility of correctness. There is no correctness here, there is no rule, there is no interpretation; there is only image. The categories and themes have precluded the possibility of categories and themes, because on some interpretation they might all be correct, or the opposite of correct. The viewer who seeks refuge outside the frame, or an explanation outside the frame, is forced immediately back into the unexplainable. The viewer is confronted with pure image, and this is a purely negative argument to pure image, it is the only thing left when we abandon correctness, when we abandon representation.
This image is a bit more complicated than the ones we've studied, because it's telling the viewer that it's staged- but we KNOW that! All photographs are essentially staged and this one just does so with obvious labels. Parody, power, irony, primal, psychological formlessness? These words have no function in the image itself, except for pushing outside concepts into the eye of the viewer. Seeing cannot be denied, and this photo is an event of seeing the actual staging of "Everyman and his Broker." But what if the image internally resists its own labeling? After gazing into the scene for a while, the mundane becomes alien and the viewer is entranced by blacks, whites, blues, and gray screens, and all at once the event of seeing is transformed from seeing pre-made concepts into seeing beautiful shapes & designs
Everything is jammed in. These guys are sophisticated cows at the milking machines. Everyone is linked to somewhere else. This is not like Zappa's Cocaine Decisions. These men, in contrast, are tools. They're little circuits in a switchboard, performing the work that the computers can't. Obviously, women are conspicuously absent. It's funny that it says "Staged Photo". Perhaps this is because it doesn't seem any less real than a non-staged photo, in the sense that were it non-staged, it would represent this event, but this sort of event and place, staged or not, exists, and so this is just as real a representation. Of course, we're not reading these representationally, though. It's funny too, the categories and themes. Why on earth put those there. I don't want to look at them. They seem to erode the impact of the image. Perhaps it is because they undemocratize the image, by privileging their story of it.
Its amazing how everybody in the room is either blathering into a telephone to someone presumably outside the room, or siphoning in image/information through a computer monitor, image information also from somewhere outside the room. The only visible and certain connection between the humans in the frame is their common presence in the frame. But they are not the only figures in the frame. Within the frame, dozens of dark frames clutter the desks, some with their backs to us, others showing their faces which contain, framed, mini-frames harboring important (one must assume, given the seriousness of the human postures) information. Above those frames, dozens more emit an eerie, unnatural light from their fluorescent tubes, and still more contain slits, for the sucking in or the expelling of air, presumably to make livable an unlivable landscape. Everyman is nowhere, and these are as likely robots as men.
This image is loud. The technologic devices overflow the sound stream into the visual element of this image. The yelling, the facial expressions, the air vents all suggest noise – incredibly telling - creating a image far from a noiseless tranquility.
This image is doubly loud. The image within the image is the seeing of seeing and in turn the hearing of hearing. Thus, when a presumable “broker” yells, he yells double – as this image is the image of the image – thus creating double the noise, double the chaos.
Thus, Everyman and his Broker does not exist singly exist within this image, but exist outside this image. This loud chaotic room invites the viewer to participate in the noise – standing, sitting, talking, typing, swearing, coughing, squeaking – the viewer cannot escape the noise of this image, the viewer and the viewed are not mutually exclusive, one cannot exist without the other.
Aren't all photographs staged in a way? What makes this one special? The family portrait, the photo of a beautiful landscape- they are all the photographer's taking up what he sees and framing it, 'putting it on a stage' to be viewed as a new image. Here, the photograph of brokers is joined by several words. These words take up as much space as the photograph, making them seen just as important. They are also a staged image. They can't be taken away from the photo on top, because now the two halves together are one image. Seeing the image also becomes reading it. Reading them together becomes quite complex.
What is the image here, the words below the scene or the scene above the words? Is this an ad in a magazine or is it something that should be hanging up in an art gallery somewhere? Simply put, everything is image. Nothing is left out side the frame, the words, the people, the technology. Everything is in flux. The man yelling on the phone in the middle of the image is just as loud as the words below screaming to be deciphered. But is the reading of the words any different then the reading of this image? Unlikely. They are the same seeing. Viewers do not utilize a different seeing for reading then they do for an image, film, or the world for that matter. It is all in play and everything is left for interpretation. The gazes in this image are pulling the eyes in multiple directions. Where is the point of focus? If there were such a point, would it give this image some sort of meaning? There is no meaning here, just image going. Lights beam upwards from the floor and gradually fade into the fixtures above. It is as if the world has been turned upside down, but the brokers pay no attention to such nuances, they are caught up in the bump and grind of the corporate world. The brokers are simply fodder filling in space in this vast room that seems to go on forever. The event appears to be taking place around the Joe Torri look alike, but what is different from what these men are doing then the ones scattered throughout the room? Attention is captured through the camera’s focus, but the foreground and background are difficult to determine. Action is taking place in every crevasse of the room and the image is being created everywhere, including below.
The fact that the image is accompanied by a caption poses interesting questions about it to us. The caption informs us that the image is "staged", implying that it is in some sense fictitious. However, there is no reason to consider this image any less real than any other. To do so would be to impute characteristics to the image which exist outside the image itself. Hence, the image isn't a "picture of" what brokers to; conversely, it, like any other image, is just image. When we see this as an image rather than a depiction of something, we become more attuned to the aesthetic possibilities of the image.
If this image is staged, then who or what is the director? Mark Lafia, the credited artist, could have staged this photograph, but, then again, I am sure that this photograph could have been candid. In this ambiguity the viewer can go no further; Mark Lafia’s intent becomes the substance and life of the image. But what if we think of the image as a stage, where many performances may be staged? The viewer may appeal to the “categories” and “themes” to catalyze these performances. The genres and adjectives present below the image serve as agents of inflection for the image. Emphasizing “parody” in the image uncovers the humor and artificiality present in the image, however emphasizing “power” uncovers the raw seriousness and anxiety in the image. This image resists singular narration and instead appeals to the active proliferation and multiplicity of narration within the image. Each combination of “themes” and “categories” (out of the millions available) affords a new experience, perception and angle for the viewer. This still image is already a million original renditions of itself. Based upon the adjectives or genres chosen the image regulates itself deemphasizing some things and highlighting others. This process produces images that may be complimentary or clashing, despite the fact that they play upon the same image. But how can such disparate images be united in the very finite photo? Think again of the image as a stage and each combination of “categories” and “themes” is a new director, a new creator. Lafia’s singularity falls to the fore in favor of an endless image. Each inflection scrambles familiar narrations into many relationships, giving the viewer a new performance with each alteration. Mark Lafia is too simple and very limited, but the adjectives as affects become the author always remaking, remixing the image they drape themselves upon What about the adjectives? Are they subject to the same forces as the image? Combine some of the “categories” and “themes” before looking at the image. Already thousands of images, memories and emotions arise, which then proceed to inflect each other. The image is a stage for the interplay of internalities and externalities of the viewer. The viewer both becomes director and audience; the image provides all of the necessary tools. Every man and his broker or is it everyman and his image? This is an everyimage for everyman.
Text below the image reads "staged photo" and lists various interpretations of the image by the artist himself; the very appropriateness of narrativizing an image with these tags is called into question. Do the categories and themes describing the image preclude possible interpretations or do they prompt new ones? Is this image merely confirming the world or is birthing one anew? The image points back to its very means of production, distribution and consumption: the event of seeing. The tag "staged" does not indicate that the image is a contrived creation by an artist. Perhaps, the term "staged" is a term which lacks unique descriptive force; for, all images are staged in the world (just not as concretely as Marc Lafia's image).
It's strange to see so few commenting on the issues raised by Marc Lafia, in the blog and the image, and repeatedly emphasized by Prof. Coffeen. Maybe it's not though, because it truly is ridiculously complex and mentally exhausting.
I think "paulk" had the most interesting argument relating to these issues--the effects of an image interrogating its own effects--but even those who point not to the image's complexity but to its banality--as cliche affect, as an experience robbed from the viewer by the author--actually say something useful about the image's true complexity.
This is image is ripe with teases, trick questions, and false clues asking for explanations inadequate to the image as a whole. It pokes fun at the visually illiterate and inattentive. This is one sense in which it truly is parody, and I have to say that I think some of us are the objects of this mockery, though there have been precedents to it (my reading of David Shrigley's coconut is similar, and the golden statue of MJ and Bubbles seems to deploy a similar strategy as well). Yes, at first glance, the image might seem a highly overdetermined, contrived attempt at portraying the hectic frustration in the face of the man on the phone. In that sense, it would be pure cliche, pure bathos, but thankfully it isn't. It doesn't take much to show that this image is more complicated than that. The image has rather knowingly setting this trap for the lazy viewer; it's quite aware that the man on the phone is a copy of an already copied and cliche affect, for he seems a copy of himself! (Look to the left. Lafia already pointed it out.)
Of course, there's the text as well. It's already been said that this does not rob the viewer of any experience but in fact adds to it, for why not read the text as yet more image, both in itself and in relation to the image it seeks to comment on? At this moment, in this limited space and time, I have nothing enlightening to add about the effects of the text in the image. I honestly see no end in sight down that path.
This image is a seeing of seeing from multiple aspects that enhance the complexity of an already complex image. The numerous computer screens engage in their own virtual seeing. The viewer sees the people in the image seeing something—or nothing—as they are on the phone, talking to an invisible person on the other line. The viewer sees the seeing of the camera based on the framing of the image, of this staged photo. The description of the image creates another seeing of the image, but the text is an image, an event, in itself, not just something that refers to or points to the photo above.
The multiple seeings of this image makes me think that certain seeings carry more weight than others. It makes me think that Marc Lafia possesses the authoritative interpretation. But on the contrary, the image, packed with its many seeings, democratizes all seeings of itself. Marc Lafia sees just one way of how the image goes. I see another.
It appears as though this image is a frame within a frame, a figure pulled out of its humanity—the institution—and refolded back in as another form of institution, capturing some epic moment that can neither be thematic nor categorical despite its attempt.
The men have technological appendages in order to complete their work. The phone and 3 computers indicate an extension of humanity into a realm where one informs the labor of the other however, what is really interesting is the photo informs the viewer of human ignorance and arrogance. One computer could do the work needed by any one or all of the individuals in the room if they knew how to use it. It takes 3 computer screens and a phone to do business for the human.
Tension dominates this picture, a clash between dark and light. Jagged, yet orderly erratic shapes pierce out into the fluorescent sky. These people are inside the cockpit, commanding and navigating the corporate monster. The air is thick with stress, the friction and confusion only worsen the longer it is observed.
There is nothing "everyman" about this image. Though the image offers the viewer many of the "same"--i.e. patternistic screens, lights, and even men--none are truly like another. To lump them in an "everyman category" is flawed. Each has their own image within, their own personality, their own perspectival skew.
There is so much concentrated in this image: the look of intense concentration evident on the man's face and in his grip on the telephone cord, his furrowed brow, the suspension of his shoulders... then there is the concentration of vast amounts of information on the computer screens to which everyone's focus is directed. But if I, as the viewer, refuse to concentrate my eyes the way the image asks me to, focusing on the periphery rather than the center, vital to its effect.
This picture reminds me of McLuhan's The Medium is the Massage. In it, there was a picture with some text underneath it, but the text seemed to be totally unrelated to the picture. Likewise, the listed categories and themes don't seem to match up with the picture. But in putting that text there, the image tries to force a reading or interpretation upon itself... but it doesn't quite work.
And so there is relationship and non-relationship between the text and the "picture" and the relationship between the two (i.e. the relationship and the non-relationship) which creates a confusing/strange/funny/unsettling moment, that I can't really understand.
It's a piece of dream-imagery. You move through anonymous space except for where your attention arrests the iconic and gives him a face, here now, before your eyes, the broker. You're sure you've never been here before, but the novel circumstances surrounding this event, the assortment of these very businessmen, the arrangement of this office space, these lights, these terminals, this arrayment in nowhere time, just-so,. You should be suspicious, as i never am, in my dreams. A semi-conscious hand weaves a strange beauty through my dreams, a strange beauty particularly fine in how it plays to MY sensibilities. Weirdest of all, the man in the suit looked just like a younger Joe Torre.
To say that "Everyman and His Broker" is the title of this image is both accurate and inaccurate. It is inaccurate because there are many titles of this image, in the same way as titles of chapters in a book are also titles. They testify to groupings of the book, just as the main title attempts to testify (sometimes does) to the totality of the book's contents, aims, emotions, plots, characters, settings, historical context of release, etc. The titles in the right hand margin serve as testimonies similar to chapter titles. Artist, Categories, and Themes, and their subtitles provide points of depature, realms of play, from which and within which this image operates. Like the chapter titles of a book, they are inevitably infused as images within this larger presentation, the final product that appears before its viewer. Because of the education of titles, looking at the image gives a freedom for exploration. The lights on the ceiling are arrayed in patterns, in a similar way to the orientation of brokers in the room, a relic of a project planner or boss pushing for optimization and efficiency. The vents on the ceiling, too, show how a certain circulation and flow throughout the office can be maintained, or rather, facilitated. As Natasha noted, the light coming in through the window becomes refracted, stretched and dragged out, resulting in an "ethereal glow." However, this ethereal glow does not necessarily have to box, or capture the occupants of the room. It could also testify that there is room for movement and interesting production of light within the confines of an office.
The commentary on the image is at the same time constituent of the image. This on/of simultaneity applies to the form of the blog itself, creating another simultaneity of image and commentary on the image. The distinction is there, there are frames and illusory divisions that lead one to believe that they are separate. It is all a trick however, a clever sophism, a beautiful illusion that reveals itself upon further looking. The categories given by the artist over-determine the image. IT can be read as anything, there are too many options, too many possibilities. Commentary is supposed to sharpen, expose, argue (to clarify), but this does the opposite. It is an inversion of the function of argumentation, these categories and themes make the image more ambiguous, more disconcerted. Perhaps "overflowing" sums it up best.
Each week, we will consider an image. This image may come from anywhere—from a painting, the news, an art photograph, a picture of my child.
Your job is to read this image. You need write only four lines; you may write more. Inflect the image. Give it a spin. Make us see what we may not be seeing. Take up the image, do something with it, then give it back to us—in words.
The goal is multifold. It is to learn to reckon a diversity of images. It is to learn the art of the riff, the spin, the take. And, in the end, I hope we have created an exquisite symphony, a chorus of voices, each distinct, each singing an image in its own register.
ATTENDANCE IS REQUIRED. You may miss 3 classes during the semester. For each class missed after that, your grade will be lowered a full grade—from an A to a B.
EVERY weekend, I will post an image on this blog. By Thursday's class, you must write a response to that image as a comment on this blog. -You will have to create a Google account. -Please use your name in your identity so I know who you are when you post your comment. If you already have a Google identity but it does not reflect your name, please create a new one. -Your comment can be brief; in fact, it should be—anywhere from 3-10 lines. Try to make it pithy, astute, sharp. -These are not optional: each one you miss will translate into the loss of a full grade for your class participation grade.
There will be three papers scattered through the semester; they will be @ two pages long. These are not optional. If you fail to do one, you will fail the class.
Grading -Class participation: 30% -Paper 1: 20% -Paper 2: 20% -Paper 3: 30% -I WILL NOT GRANT INCOMPLETES.
Every image seen is already your image. You're sight is your possession of the world. Seeing is the seeing of something seen, seeing. Seeing is an encounter of reading, writing, instrumentality; it's an event. The encounter is the event. Here, the artist brings the image event knowingly into the familiar instrumentality of the web. See the image, read the tags, read the image, see the tags.
ReplyDeleteWhat is the caption to the image, the image to the caption? What are these tags? All these words?
Is this image staged? What's staged? The photograph in the image, or the photograph inside the form factor? Is it fiction, non-fiction? Where is the fiction, the non-fiction? Posed, unposed? Found? Constructed? It's literature.
The image as an event of the archive. The archive constitutes the image event. The image already reading. The reading event domesticated, gamed, played, situating the recording event. Seeing as a recording event always an event of re-recording.
Is this an image of a form factor, something you'd see on del.ic.ious, on flickr, in a digital photo archive?
Are we looking at a film still, done in photoshop? Is the second man without the phone the double of the man with the phone?
What is this tagged perverse? It's primal, it's theatrical, it's staged, so it says. What is in front of us here?
Not only do we see this image, but we also see its being seen. Somebody is worked into this image by categorizing (which is a type of seeing) it as fiction, literature, theatrical movement, etc. Presumably the same somebody sees themes ranging from the psychological to the mathematical. What is so important about these categories and themes? The components of the lists detract from the importance of making such distinctions, since they are so broad that they could reflect almost any image. My point is that these categories and themes are not comparable to Aristotle's four causes that distinguish any thing from every other thing; instead, they suggest a type of internal framing of the overall image that puts Aristotle's causes outside the scope.
ReplyDeleteBut let's not forget the colorful part of the image -- the part that seems to be the subject of the words. To look at this image is to participate in the event of seeing. Like any human event, that of seeing can be life changing or inconsequential. It depends on the event. The particular event that involves this image slows down the increasingly quick pace of the financial world. It is a freeze frame. But it is also purported to be a "staged photo." What are the effects of staging this photo? Who, if anybody, is the beneficiary of this contrivance?
I am not interested in what this "staged photo" says about anything. It is no authority (unless artist/uploader Marc Lafia is and I am simply unaware). I am interested in its effects because one need not be an authority to have important or interesting effects. So what are the effects? The freeze frame slowing down re-presents the financial world as an even faster place.
But if Aristotle's four causes are irrelevant to this image, then what does that say about its ability to effect anything that can have the four causes?
So many frames within a frame! Each man has three computer frames in front of him, and there are many frames within the frame of the computer. The light fixtures above replicate frames set amongst the many frames of the tiled ceiling. Then there are the frames of the glasses that the man is holding and another man behind him is wearing. In the latter case, the man is looking through frames (glasses) at a frame within the frame of the computer. The technology is so pervasive. The ratio of computers to man is 3:1 and each man’s hand is holding a telephone. This image focuses on the technology, even if the technology does not take center stage, and not on man.
ReplyDeleteLight streams in through the windows, creating an ethereal glow that illuminates this profanity: The self-serving nature of human capitalism is captured, framed, posed, captured and framed again. And it is all calculated.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how well the central character can see without his glasses... Would he see us seeing him?
This image is a compact, pre-analyzed, pre-scripted, and pre-interpreted. The photograph is not operating in a constant middle, the way it would have without its added "themes," now it's operating at an end. It's dying a little. We're given a title, we're told it is staged and in NYC, we're given some themes to pontificate about should we have to analyze this image in a blog, and we're given the name of the artist. We know nothing has been left to chance in the photograph and thanks to the added words, now nothing is left to chance in viewing the photograph. Like the business man in his cubicle, this image is afraid of chance, hesitant to venture outside of the constituted norm, comfortable with a monochromatic setting. The setting is hectic, but it's also just another day as a broker.
ReplyDeleteThe words change and inform the viewing experience of the photograph, the author is not dead here, but the image has lost a little bit of its vitality, a little bit of its mystery. The adjectives provided under the "Themes" heading steal the potential the viewer may have had to conjure them up him/herself. The words rob the viewer of an unadulterated viewing experience, and I think it could have been good.
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ReplyDeleteThere is a Nabokovian author/interpreter complex germinating not only in the detailed annotations under the image, but even on this message board. How does one interpret an image already interpreted by its author? Is meta-interpretation the next move in the post narrative world? And what are the roles of the author and the interpreter? Is the author reliable even of his own artistic creation, or does his artistic creation extend beyond even his own authority? Do I focus on Marc Laffia’s hand that supposedly snapped a staged shot of financial frenzy, the hand that typed the blurbs (artist, category, themes) about the photo and its author, or the hand of Marc Ruffian on the message board talking about his own seeing? Does the author have the rights to what he instrumentally captured via a mechanical medium of the camera? Isn’t he but the framer of the camera’s retina? A mere organizer and not a prophet, whether the material be visual or linguistic?
ReplyDeleteThese retorts all result from regressing to a search for some genesis in a hermeneutic circle of cat and mouse; sniffing out an origin from a detached whiff instead of jumping inside the text itself. The photographer sees through a lens and is not the lens itself, so all lenses are play for my own. The mediums of imagery and language are not unilateral and the subtext Marc Laffia included with the picture is an extension of the picture. The author’s categorical profile, being submitted by himself, may be just as staged as the photo itself: a narrative pretending to be reality; and the author’s diligent first response on this class’s message-board (Hi Marc!), perhaps may be (whiff whiff) an imposter playing the part of author. So what is posed, who is posing, what is real and virtual, unmasked or charlatan, become all fodder for the gullible critic prone to hasty generalizations and adhering to authorial opinions. In reality, or faux-reality, the narrative, like the narrator, being themselves tricksters in an act, lend their stage for a new character to not rip down the curtain, but to join in the performance: front and center emerges the interpreter from the shadows.
Can an image ever be separated from its means of production? Isn't an image, after all, an act of imaging, an act of taking up and making sense of? There is no such thing as the seen; there is only seeing.
ReplyDeleteWhat is so very odd about this image is that it is cut through with so many angles, so many teases—yes, it's a tease of teases. It is stretched this way and that; it goes this way and that.
Do the themes and names modify the "image"? Or does the image modify the words and themes? Where do we look? How do we make sense of this thing that is over run with sense?
This image spilleth over.
In some sense, perhaps, this is the image of seeing—the themes and words and graphics are all seeing each other and seeing us seeing them. It is like a Burroughs shot gun painting but with words and concepts, not just paint.
A network of buzzing connections deprived of a center or source. Patches of light with no sun in sight. Stacks of computers live to access the webs of the world. People pop up and fizzle into the background. The man standing, the boss perhaps, is replaceable, a cheap replica. Status and hierarchy hold no weight; the people's positions are purely to treat the eye. Voices trickle out of machines, life funnels through screens, the future is unfurling right here right now on the surface.
ReplyDeleteCategories and themes sometimes act as readymade paths to the core, but here they amplify possibilities into a secondary plexus. Each word creates a new tint, a new spin, on the already purring web-machine. Any sort of paramount meaning or idea trying to stand out against the whispering ways of understanding struggling to be heard, to get their chance to state their case. Only one category has a straight shot answer: Artist: Marc Lafia. Yet this isn't an answer at all. Marc Lafia, as strange a character as the mystery voices traveling through the telephone wires, is fragmentized into letters and sounds floating with the words, wires, suits, and screens around it in a mesh of future possibilities.
This would be a relativly easy image to narravtize, especially in light of recent events,it looks as if it could be torn from the fron of any number of periodicals. But the narrative which jumps easily out at the viewer is not interesting. This image is interesting in its portrail of space. The room seems to continue beyond the edges of the image, there is no end to it just a horizon. Part of this is the quality of the light in the image, the bright white walls and florecent lighting. This gives the image a barren quality despite the fact that it is full of action and stuff. Also despite the light in te image it is cool, the brightness doesn't lend warmth to the image. This may also be because of the sunken apperance of the central figures eyes. The severe look lends itself to institutional cold.
ReplyDeleteThe artist structures the viewing of this image with the words he puts down. This structure is indeed a limit. It limits our interpretation. Interesting enough this structure, this limit is defined by words such as formless and overflowing. But also mathematical. Mathematical and formless? Ironic. Do these words refer to the image or to themselves? The words are concepts expressed in the image: conceptual. The words are not necessarily separate from the image, commenting on it. It is a unified experience. The artist has created a combined experience of image and words which overwhelms the viewer in a confusion of combination, overlap, and progression
ReplyDeleteThis image seems to me to be the closest thing to a scene out of a modern movie that we have commented on thus far. Sure, there is a ton of action happening and all sorts of drama portrayed here. But this action scene does not provoke any mind-blowing thoughts for me.
ReplyDeleteAfter seeing such strange things in this class, this one pales in comparison. I feel like it leaves nothing to question. It is shallow, it is cliched.
The image is made by words, making people stand this way and that, so the subjects form an image with props and bodies, and then the words come back and straighten things up, preparing for the shutter *click*.
ReplyDeleteAt first, this image appeared to be dictating an interpretation or a seeing of itself. However, after this
ReplyDeleteinitial reaction, I began looking at the interaction between these words and the image. How the image inflected the words
how the words inflected the image.
These words are, in a sense, still dictating, but this framing is not strict.
we have both "fiction" and "nonfiction"
Placed not in a category, but in a continuum.
*The number of categories/ themes etc, are sort of jumbled, not necessarily opposed. The jumble is reminiscent of
business of the photograph.
"mathematical" and "visceral"? Who knew these things could go together?
Who knew the top half and the lower half, these words and photograph, could make IMAGE?
There are numerous zones of activity in this image. Each person appears to be contained in an invisible bubble in which they are inseparable from their phones and computers. It's as if everyone had cubicles dividing them from one another, but the cubicle walls were somehow subtracted from the image. A great deal of frustration and anxiety is also visible in the faces and postures of the individuals in the image, but the source of this emotion is not visible. The overall environment in the image appears hostile, but the individuals don't appear to interact. All are frustrated but the frustration arises from a series of individual sources that do not build upon each other. The hostile environment of the room is only created when these individual spheres of activity are taken in together.
ReplyDeleteThis is far and away the most complex image we've looked at. Why? Because it cannot simply be read by resorting to affect, to experience.
ReplyDeleteThis image interrogates its own means of production AND of processing.
Most conspicuously, it is curious to me that people image the text to inflect the image. Might the text be an image on its own? Might the image inflect the text? This image is such an overwhelmingly complex network of concepts and affect.
What does "staged photo" even mean? In what sense is this staged? What, precisely, was staged?
This is such a slippery image.
The image along with all the words below it form this one complete picture. Are all the themes listed simultaneously present in the image? Or are they all just possible themes, only a few are present at a time? The themes listed are mere words; the image above embodies these words and bring them to the foreground. The image is far reaching. It at once can be categorized as fiction and non fiction and it can be simultaneously mathematical and perverse. There are so many events happening in this image that it's impossible to label just one all inclusive theme and category for it. A viewer is always seeing this image and likewise a plethora of themes and categories are being seen.
ReplyDeleteThis image is very specific in a way that is very recognizable. It even has a title, categories and themes. This image is focused upon that yelling broker and all his surroundings re-affirm those themes. But was this intentional? Is it asking to break away from those texts and words and to take up the entire image as a whole? Do those texts reflect on image and the image to the text? This image asks not to just look at the image then read the text or read the text and look at the image but to read the entire thing as a whole. There’s nothing to be dismissed. The white background for the text is as much as significant as those lights and ceilings. Everything is seeing in this image. The texts points away from its self in a way that is ‘anything but, those categories, themes, and title.’ But at the same time, it points to itself as an image.
ReplyDeleteWhat does the caption do to the image? Does it explain the image? The caption seems to narrativize the image, giving it a perspective which it might not otherwise have. I wouldn’t have so clearly known what this image was without the caption; I wouldn’t have necessarily known it was staged. Is this a good thing that I now know without even having to take a closer look? This image seems to depict something real, yet the caption seems to negate that realism. Labeling it as “fiction,” and announcing that it has been staged, the caption takes away the sense of the real that this image had. Does an image have to depict a real event to be real then?
ReplyDeleteThere is a strange symmetry to the image. It can be divided down the middle, and the two halves would almost be mirror reflections of each other, at least as far as the positions of the standing men are. The image also adheres to a traditional two-point perspective, which is centered with the man in the middle. This also fits into the reflection. The angles at which we see the three standing men also carry the effect of mirrors. The two men that are farther back might as well be reflections of the man in the center with mirrors that have been placed at perpendicular angles behind the center man. The man on the left has his head turned as the center man's reflection in the mirror was be. The man on the right is also at the expected angle that the center man's back reflection would be. The caption on the bottom, "Everyman and his broker," also gives a feeling of self-reflection. "Everyman" can easily be seen as "every man," making this picture a mirror reflection of the viewer, who is a member of the category "every man" and probably just as angry as the brokers in the mirror. There are, nevertheless, obvious non-reflective aspects of the image. All the aforementioned reflections are imperfect, and there are many aspects that disappear or are altered in the reflections. The image hints at the presence of mirrors, but it is obvious that there are no mirrors, as all the reflections are not really perfect mirror reflections.
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of screens: computer screens, faces, the screens of the front man’s glasses, the door, and the illuminated white screens on the ceiling. The positioning of the viewer is slightly on top of the computer monitor, allowing her to see many screens. All of the screens are different, giving the viewer the option of exploring a multitude of screens. This puts the viewer in a relationship which is constantly changing. The viewer has to rethink where she is and what screens to focus on.
ReplyDeletePiercing face...the site of the inhuman within and mixed up with the human. Flickering square flourescent lights and computer screens are visual confetti to the sharp, stark suits and slick hair.
ReplyDeleteThe descriptions are another great touch to all the other touches...just as much a paint stroke as anything else, they tug at my thoughts and perceptions of this site of happening. Frozen and eventful, each word triggers another shot-theatrical, fiction, spectral...they're all different ways of seeing the same complex thing.
This image plays with theatricality and poses in so many different ways. It cannot be characterized as a work that falls under the category of either the performing arts or the visual arts, it is both, a "staged photo". This image is not singular either, with every theme it professes to have a different image is seen. This image is playful, it does not take itself too seriously.
ReplyDeleteThe all encompassing cliche image. Not only is it cliche but it needs to promote how cliche it is with a description. The affect of the man appears to be composed, contrived adding in affect, a new affect. One that is totally void of actually believing this man's stress induced facial patterns, and leaning towards laughter of "oh, how one must act out that expression". Funny how far people go to create an affect and how easy it is for them to fail.
ReplyDeleteThe room is impersonal and blank. The most notable features in the frame are the structures. Like the tiles on the ceiling, the rows of computer monitors running parallel with the unhappy men attached to their phones. In their matching uniforms they form a modern assembly line. Plastic receptors mediate the most intimate of stressful deliberations. Even though they can not be seen by the "clients" they speak to, it is necessary to stand up from time to time to get their point across.
ReplyDeleteEveryman and his Broker. If this “staged photo” just had its title it would be representation. Marc Lafia, we would have to argue, would be commenting on something about New York brokers, or some such nonsense. However, the introduction of categories and themes calls representation into question. Perhaps the photo isn’t even staged at all. The themes and categories listed are disjuncts, but they sit below this image as conjuncts to which we might apply to the image, were it to represent. But how does an image ever represent? The artist or the critic or the lazy reader invents a rule, and argues that the image conforms to the rule. The representational image, by this method, is correct, contains the possibility of correctness. There is no correctness here, there is no rule, there is no interpretation; there is only image. The categories and themes have precluded the possibility of categories and themes, because on some interpretation they might all be correct, or the opposite of correct. The viewer who seeks refuge outside the frame, or an explanation outside the frame, is forced immediately back into the unexplainable. The viewer is confronted with pure image, and this is a purely negative argument to pure image, it is the only thing left when we abandon correctness, when we abandon representation.
ReplyDeleteThis image is a bit more complicated than the ones we've studied, because it's telling the viewer that it's staged- but we KNOW that! All photographs are essentially staged and this one just does so with obvious labels. Parody, power, irony, primal, psychological formlessness? These words have no function in the image itself, except for pushing outside concepts into the eye of the viewer. Seeing cannot be denied, and this photo is an event of seeing the actual staging of "Everyman and his Broker." But what if the image internally resists its own labeling? After gazing into the scene for a while, the mundane becomes alien and the viewer is entranced by blacks, whites, blues, and gray screens, and all at once the event of seeing is transformed from seeing pre-made concepts into seeing beautiful shapes & designs
ReplyDeleteEverything is jammed in. These guys are sophisticated cows at the milking machines. Everyone is linked to somewhere else. This is not like Zappa's Cocaine Decisions. These men, in contrast, are tools. They're little circuits in a switchboard, performing the work that the computers can't. Obviously, women are conspicuously absent. It's funny that it says "Staged Photo". Perhaps this is because it doesn't seem any less real than a non-staged photo, in the sense that were it non-staged, it would represent this event, but this sort of event and place, staged or not, exists, and so this is just as real a representation. Of course, we're not reading these representationally, though. It's funny too, the categories and themes. Why on earth put those there. I don't want to look at them. They seem to erode the impact of the image. Perhaps it is because they undemocratize the image, by privileging their story of it.
ReplyDeleteIts amazing how everybody in the room is either blathering into a telephone to someone presumably outside the room, or siphoning in image/information through a computer monitor, image information also from somewhere outside the room. The only visible and certain connection between the humans in the frame is their common presence in the frame. But they are not the only figures in the frame. Within the frame, dozens of dark frames clutter the desks, some with their backs to us, others showing their faces which contain, framed, mini-frames harboring important (one must assume, given the seriousness of the human postures) information. Above those frames, dozens more emit an eerie, unnatural light from their fluorescent tubes, and still more contain slits, for the sucking in or the expelling of air, presumably to make livable an unlivable landscape. Everyman is nowhere, and these are as likely robots as men.
ReplyDeleteThis image is loud. The technologic devices overflow the sound stream into the visual element of this image. The yelling, the facial expressions, the air vents all suggest noise – incredibly telling - creating a image far from a noiseless tranquility.
ReplyDeleteThis image is doubly loud. The image within the image is the seeing of seeing and in turn the hearing of hearing. Thus, when a presumable “broker” yells, he yells double – as this image is the image of the image – thus creating double the noise, double the chaos.
Thus, Everyman and his Broker does not exist singly exist within this image, but exist outside this image. This loud chaotic room invites the viewer to participate in the noise – standing, sitting, talking, typing, swearing, coughing, squeaking – the viewer cannot escape the noise of this image, the viewer and the viewed are not mutually exclusive, one cannot exist without the other.
Aren't all photographs staged in a way? What makes this one special? The family portrait, the photo of a beautiful landscape- they are all the photographer's taking up what he sees and framing it, 'putting it on a stage' to be viewed as a new image.
ReplyDeleteHere, the photograph of brokers is joined by several words. These words take up as much space as the photograph, making them seen just as important. They are also a staged image. They can't be taken away from the photo on top, because now the two halves together are one image. Seeing the image also becomes reading it. Reading them together becomes quite complex.
What is the image here, the words below the scene or the scene above the words? Is this an ad in a magazine or is it something that should be hanging up in an art gallery somewhere? Simply put, everything is image. Nothing is left out side the frame, the words, the people, the technology. Everything is in flux. The man yelling on the phone in the middle of the image is just as loud as the words below screaming to be deciphered. But is the reading of the words any different then the reading of this image? Unlikely. They are the same seeing. Viewers do not utilize a different seeing for reading then they do for an image, film, or the world for that matter. It is all in play and everything is left for interpretation.
ReplyDeleteThe gazes in this image are pulling the eyes in multiple directions. Where is the point of focus? If there were such a point, would it give this image some sort of meaning? There is no meaning here, just image going. Lights beam upwards from the floor and gradually fade into the fixtures above. It is as if the world has been turned upside down, but the brokers pay no attention to such nuances, they are caught up in the bump and grind of the corporate world. The brokers are simply fodder filling in space in this vast room that seems to go on forever. The event appears to be taking place around the Joe Torri look alike, but what is different from what these men are doing then the ones scattered throughout the room? Attention is captured through the camera’s focus, but the foreground and background are difficult to determine. Action is taking place in every crevasse of the room and the image is being created everywhere, including below.
The fact that the image is accompanied by a caption poses interesting questions about it to us. The caption informs us that the image is "staged", implying that it is in some sense fictitious. However, there is no reason to consider this image any less real than any other. To do so would be to impute characteristics to the image which exist outside the image itself. Hence, the image isn't a "picture of" what brokers to; conversely, it, like any other image, is just image. When we see this as an image rather than a depiction of something, we become more attuned to the aesthetic possibilities of the image.
ReplyDeleteIf this image is staged, then who or what is the director? Mark Lafia, the credited artist, could have staged this photograph, but, then again, I am sure that this photograph could have been candid. In this ambiguity the viewer can go no further; Mark Lafia’s intent becomes the substance and life of the image.
ReplyDeleteBut what if we think of the image as a stage, where many performances may be staged? The viewer may appeal to the “categories” and “themes” to catalyze these performances. The genres and adjectives present below the image serve as agents of inflection for the image. Emphasizing “parody” in the image uncovers the humor and artificiality present in the image, however emphasizing “power” uncovers the raw seriousness and anxiety in the image. This image resists singular narration and instead appeals to the active proliferation and multiplicity of narration within the image. Each combination of “themes” and “categories” (out of the millions available) affords a new experience, perception and angle for the viewer. This still image is already a million original renditions of itself. Based upon the adjectives or genres chosen the image regulates itself deemphasizing some things and highlighting others. This process produces images that may be complimentary or clashing, despite the fact that they play upon the same image.
But how can such disparate images be united in the very finite photo? Think again of the image as a stage and each combination of “categories” and “themes” is a new director, a new creator. Lafia’s singularity falls to the fore in favor of an endless image. Each inflection scrambles familiar narrations into many relationships, giving the viewer a new performance with each alteration. Mark Lafia is too simple and very limited, but the adjectives as affects become the author always remaking, remixing the image they drape themselves upon
What about the adjectives? Are they subject to the same forces as the image?
Combine some of the “categories” and “themes” before looking at the image. Already thousands of images, memories and emotions arise, which then proceed to inflect each other. The image is a stage for the interplay of internalities and externalities of the viewer. The viewer both becomes director and audience; the image provides all of the necessary tools. Every man and his broker or is it everyman and his image? This is an everyimage for everyman.
Text below the image reads "staged photo" and lists various interpretations of the image by the artist himself; the very appropriateness of narrativizing an image with these tags is called into question. Do the categories and themes describing the image preclude possible interpretations or do they prompt new ones? Is this image merely confirming the world or is birthing one anew? The image points back to its very means of production, distribution and consumption: the event of seeing. The tag "staged" does not indicate that the image is a contrived creation by an artist. Perhaps, the term "staged" is a term which lacks unique descriptive force; for, all images are staged in the world (just not as concretely as Marc Lafia's image).
ReplyDeleteIt's strange to see so few commenting on the issues raised by Marc Lafia, in the blog and the image, and repeatedly emphasized by Prof. Coffeen. Maybe it's not though, because it truly is ridiculously complex and mentally exhausting.
ReplyDeleteI think "paulk" had the most interesting argument relating to these issues--the effects of an image interrogating its own effects--but even those who point not to the image's complexity but to its banality--as cliche affect, as an experience robbed from the viewer by the author--actually say something useful about the image's true complexity.
This is image is ripe with teases, trick questions, and false clues asking for explanations inadequate to the image as a whole. It pokes fun at the visually illiterate and inattentive. This is one sense in which it truly is parody, and I have to say that I think some of us are the objects of this mockery, though there have been precedents to it (my reading of David Shrigley's coconut is similar, and the golden statue of MJ and Bubbles seems to deploy a similar strategy as well). Yes, at first glance, the image might seem a highly overdetermined, contrived attempt at portraying the hectic frustration in the face of the man on the phone. In that sense, it would be pure cliche, pure bathos, but thankfully it isn't. It doesn't take much to show that this image is more complicated than that. The image has rather knowingly setting this trap for the lazy viewer; it's quite aware that the man on the phone is a copy of an already copied and cliche affect, for he seems a copy of himself! (Look to the left. Lafia already pointed it out.)
Of course, there's the text as well. It's already been said that this does not rob the viewer of any experience but in fact adds to it, for why not read the text as yet more image, both in itself and in relation to the image it seeks to comment on? At this moment, in this limited space and time, I have nothing enlightening to add about the effects of the text in the image. I honestly see no end in sight down that path.
This image is a seeing of seeing from multiple aspects that enhance the complexity of an already complex image. The numerous computer screens engage in their own virtual seeing. The viewer sees the people in the image seeing something—or nothing—as they are on the phone, talking to an invisible person on the other line. The viewer sees the seeing of the camera based on the framing of the image, of this staged photo. The description of the image creates another seeing of the image, but the text is an image, an event, in itself, not just something that refers to or points to the photo above.
ReplyDeleteThe multiple seeings of this image makes me think that certain seeings carry more weight than others. It makes me think that Marc Lafia possesses the authoritative interpretation. But on the contrary, the image, packed with its many seeings, democratizes all seeings of itself. Marc Lafia sees just one way of how the image goes. I see another.
It appears as though this image is a frame within a frame, a figure pulled out of its humanity—the institution—and refolded back in as another form of institution, capturing some epic moment that can neither be thematic nor categorical despite its attempt.
ReplyDeleteThe men have technological appendages in order to complete their work. The phone and 3 computers indicate an extension of humanity into a realm where one informs the labor of the other however, what is really interesting is the photo informs the viewer of human ignorance and arrogance. One computer could do the work needed by any one or all of the individuals in the room if they knew how to use it. It takes 3 computer screens and a phone to do business for the human.
ReplyDeleteTension dominates this picture, a clash between dark and light. Jagged, yet orderly erratic shapes pierce out into the fluorescent sky. These people are inside the cockpit, commanding and navigating the corporate monster. The air is thick with stress, the friction and confusion only worsen the longer it is observed.
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing "everyman" about this image. Though the image offers the viewer many of the "same"--i.e. patternistic screens, lights, and even men--none are truly like another. To lump them in an "everyman category" is flawed. Each has their own image within, their own personality, their own perspectival skew.
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ReplyDeleteThere is so much concentrated in this image: the look of intense concentration evident on the man's face and in his grip on the telephone cord, his furrowed brow, the suspension of his shoulders... then there is the concentration of vast amounts of information on the computer screens to which everyone's focus is directed. But if I, as the viewer, refuse to concentrate my eyes the way the image asks me to, focusing on the periphery rather than the center, vital to its effect.
ReplyDeleteThis picture reminds me of McLuhan's The Medium is the Massage. In it, there was a picture with some text underneath it, but the text seemed to be totally unrelated to the picture. Likewise, the listed categories and themes don't seem to match up with the picture. But in putting that text there, the image tries to force a reading or interpretation upon itself... but it doesn't quite work.
ReplyDeleteAnd so there is relationship and non-relationship between the text and the "picture" and the relationship between the two (i.e. the relationship and the non-relationship) which creates a confusing/strange/funny/unsettling moment, that I can't really understand.
It's a piece of dream-imagery. You move through anonymous space except for where your attention arrests the iconic and gives him a face, here now, before your eyes, the broker. You're sure you've never been here before, but the novel circumstances surrounding this event, the assortment of these very businessmen, the arrangement of this office space, these lights, these terminals, this arrayment in nowhere time, just-so,. You should be suspicious, as i never am, in my dreams. A semi-conscious hand weaves a strange beauty through my dreams, a strange beauty particularly fine in how it plays to MY sensibilities. Weirdest of all, the man in the suit looked just like a younger Joe Torre.
ReplyDeleteTo say that "Everyman and His Broker" is the title of this image is both accurate and inaccurate. It is inaccurate because there are many titles of this image, in the same way as titles of chapters in a book are also titles. They testify to groupings of the book, just as the main title attempts to testify (sometimes does) to the totality of the book's contents, aims, emotions, plots, characters, settings, historical context of release, etc. The titles in the right hand margin serve as testimonies similar to chapter titles. Artist, Categories, and Themes, and their subtitles provide points of depature, realms of play, from which and within which this image operates. Like the chapter titles of a book, they are inevitably infused as images within this larger presentation, the final product that appears before its viewer.
ReplyDeleteBecause of the education of titles, looking at the image gives a freedom for exploration. The lights on the ceiling are arrayed in patterns, in a similar way to the orientation of brokers in the room, a relic of a project planner or boss pushing for optimization and efficiency. The vents on the ceiling, too, show how a certain circulation and flow throughout the office can be maintained, or rather, facilitated. As Natasha noted, the light coming in through the window becomes refracted, stretched and dragged out, resulting in an "ethereal glow." However, this ethereal glow does not necessarily have to box, or capture the occupants of the room. It could also testify that there is room for movement and interesting production of light within the confines of an office.
The commentary on the image is at the same time constituent of the image. This on/of simultaneity applies to the form of the blog itself, creating another simultaneity of image and commentary on the image. The distinction is there, there are frames and illusory divisions that lead one to believe that they are separate. It is all a trick however, a clever sophism, a beautiful illusion that reveals itself upon further looking. The categories given by the artist over-determine the image. IT can be read as anything, there are too many options, too many possibilities. Commentary is supposed to sharpen, expose, argue (to clarify), but this does the opposite. It is an inversion of the function of argumentation, these categories and themes make the image more ambiguous, more disconcerted. Perhaps "overflowing" sums it up best.
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