How does a photographer respond when his consciousness is haunted by the symbols of his own mortality - worse yet - tormented by the inner form of spiritual icons within the fabric of his own childhood?
I might venture that a photographer's response to the above question is a protest. Here, that voice of protest is an incarnation of a more universal struggle, sublimated into creative vision. This struggle takes place within a specific context, yet its significance goes beyond all that is specific to the subtitle. And I am led to believe that there is a striving towards wholeness in this image - an expression of maturity, and a direction for struggle. Whether this struggle is spiritual or psychological, or beyond both fields remains to be seen.
Entering the image through the gentle theme of decapitation, the consequence of an early fantasy in which the death instinct strikes against the invisible mother church - and mother God - is given here. How? Through the symbolic trace of the mother of God in a stereotyped pansy-dressed middle-aged figurine. The static posture of the beheaded figurine whose mindless devotion to faith is cast, knees pressed together in devotion, as an icon against whom anger and protest of the photographer is displaced in full view of the secular world.
Headless and therefore mindless, in homage to a reminiscence of inculcation of ritual and awareness of the bleak monochrome aspects of early life (its inner forms - guilt, sin and anxiety) - these have not led to the bloom of the fullness of inner life. If this is too hard to grasp, then perhaps I might offer the signpost for others to the easier and more general article by Peter Adams in this month's Lenswork. Here, Peter draws on Aristotle in paraphrasing his own conclusion that monochrome reveals the inner forms of subjects, whereas colour reveals the outward appearance of things.
And the artist's struggle with Catholicism comes to light when the viewer realises that the significance of light is inverted with darkness here; light symbolises mindlessness - loss of all human dimensions associated with the head (back to old Cartesianism mind-body divisions then) when faith is apprehended with stout piety, given only through the external body language of the figurine. And what is revealed through the external appearances of the figurine? Note too how her hands are simply large; perhaps a working class woman, or a man's hands cloned on, nevertheless contending with the absent Father God who has left his own church through the open door. Sexuality and its repression in the guise of the image beholds the viewer, even if he fails to recognise it.
Although the female body first appears sterile, the objectification of the female (inner) form is revealing. It is a lapse, a shadow which reveals where the original light does not shine, into the consciousness of the photographer, and so elegantly expressed.
And turning aghast from such a thought, it would be easier to intellectualise with such painful themes than revel in them. Is this not the heritage of Nietzsche's proclamation decrying God the father? Gone is mother God. Gone too is father God. The illusion of hope then lies, in the open uncertainty beyond the staircase outside of the sacred room, where the cross of Christ is left hanging on the wall as a pretty furnishing; outside the garden of Eden and into the bleak uncertainty beyond the door. That is, if in the secular protest, the viewer does not trip on the steps on his rush out in his rejection of the sacred.
And in this rejection, the cross of Christ stands at the right hand of every symbol in this darkness; light lies on the left hand of darkness and darkness on the right hand of light. The Hegelian and the Jungian recognise the fundamental nature of this struggle; the former in its intellectual application in his epic "Phenomenology of Spirit". The latter, in his personal revelation, then applied to analytical psychology and literature. The artist expresses this latter struggle more tangibly - the photographer can only express this particular struggle, and the poor viewer, left to his emotions, beheaded of consciousness beyond this field, wonders what the hell is so chilling or numbingly disturbing about this image, or what on earth has been written in response to it. Heaven knows. The open door to meaning is not as obvious as an open door. So it is back to the inner form.
Art gives expression to the inner form (technique included, which I have left for others to remark on). Which is the rationale for my reverence of such artistry. Then the struggle with the words - "once...." remind me too, that this struggle with the inner form is a private one, which I will respect and not probe any further.
Jason Stephens