reflections

“Robert Frank’s The Americans (1959) is not read as a “masterpiece of incisive social criticism [as] it has come to be considered,” but instead as “the somewhat narcissistic reflection of a personality caught up in the romance of the existential dilemma.”
- James R. Hugunin talking about Andy Grundberg’s ‘crisis of the real’

Talk about a harsh criticism. I quite like ‘the Americans’ and happen to disagree with Andy Grundberg on this point (although perhaps I’m slightly biased since it’s a photography literature collaboration between Robert Frank and Jack Kerouac, whom I’m totally lovin’ at the moment) but this is something that I worry about with my own work from time to time.

I did a series of photos of shops in a street as the start of some research for a potential piece about immigration in the area, but after I did them I realised that I was simultaneously far too emotionally attached and far to detached to create something of worth. I couldn’t look at the images I’d taken without thinking about memories of the area, and I didn’t have a feeling of belonging there, so was quite apathetic about it. It ran a very high risk of becoming a “somewhat narcissistic reflection of a personality caught up in the romance of the existential dilemma.” So I cut its ties then and there and moved onto a whole new project.

It was a hard thing to do, as I had planned for it to be my main piece so had put a lot of thought and research into it, but at the end of the day I stand by my decision, and think the work I went on to do as a result has been better and conceptually more happy with it.

It got me thinking about another of Grundberg’s musings “For many, history has become entertainment instead of instruction, and the future is whatever we care to make it.”

If art is a reaction, or reflection of culture and society at the time (which, to be fair, it would be impossible to divorce itself from) then taking note from other artists’ downfalls or misinterpretations by critics is an important thing to do, just as much so as taking caution from history otherwise we “return to Plato’s cave and do not pass go.”