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Johannesburg #39 and #44
Think of these as four separate photographs. There is a violence to faces that
are scratched away leaving only certain parts of the face visible. It is
unsettling to see the face of a man or a woman whose mouth is rubbed away.
Eyes can talk but they have no voice. The first photograph has been silenced,
as if it was really not supposed to exist. The person in this photograph is in
the process of being obliterated. His or her image is receeding into the
swirling gases of chemical processing, and he or she is not fighting them. It
is during this processing that photographs capture souls. There is, however, a
brief second in which the image can fight the chemicals, and assert its
representational rights. In the second photograph, a man is confronting the
chemicals. The eyes and the mouth are clearly visible, and the man is fighting
his way through the burning polarizing process. He is in a state of pure
concentration, and is putting up a good fight with his mind. He is struggling
with the image to remain steady and clear. But when there is a battle being
fought between the person and the image that represents him or her, the
photograph always wins. This man has fought the photograph with such intensity
that the chemicals have transformed him into a negative image of himself. His
insides are forcibly exposed, as if they had been violently scooped out of him.
The chemicals do not treat their subjects with affection. It is their goal to
remove them from the real world and insert them into a photographic image that
can be intepreted, profiled, and used to make judgments against the real person.
During processing, images move in and out of obliteration, silence, conviction,
and retreat. As with war, the images reflect the possibility of the simultaneous
presence and absence of both violence and poetry:
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