"A mirror hangs on the wall opposite. She doesn't think of it, but it thinks of her. How true to her image it is, as a humble slave who shows his devotion by being faithful, a slave, who, although she means something to him, means nothing to her, who although he dares to grasp her, does not dare to comprehend her. That unhappy mirror, which can capture her image but not her; that unhappy mirror, which cannot hide her image in its secret depths, hide it from, the whole world, but must on the contrary betray it to others, as now to me. What agony if a man were so made. And yet aren't there many who are made thus, who own nothing except in the instant when they show it to others, who grasp the surface only, not the substance......" From Either/or - The Seducer's Diary p258 Soren Kierkegaard.
I find what Dominic has expressed in this image so lucid, and compelling. I have not dared comment on this image before, since nothing I say will be any easier to follow than Kierkegaard.
However the Danish thinker reminds me that reading a text, let alone reading an image is a task which today either falls between two stools, or is left hung and dry.
Oh well, here goes....
Using the depth of Kierkegaard's analysis as my reference, I am led to believe that the image deals with reflected forms of man and woman, not concrete forms. In discerning the difference between man and woman, and their struggle for union - or rupture - the sensual dimension is expelled from this image. "Woman is substance, and man is reflection" - an aphorism from the Seducers Diary. What does this mean to modern ears?
Going beyond superficial anatomical differences; into the closet of man and woman, the Danish psychologist-philosopher tightens the noose of meaning. The mirrored image of the noose and stool is senseless unless the substance of the woman - the textures and husk of a woman's superficial externa - is first grasped (in traumatic shock, or as a focal point). The modern feminist will identify with the phallic power in a presumed patriarchal consciousness (whether that be religious, or secular) in the image, binding the woman into helplessness. Her interpretation would be that marriage is a dominion - a hierarchical domination of the weaker gender. But the semiologist recognises how union - "tying the knot" in marriage, is transformed into its perverse forms: sadistic domination of the female body through the rope binding the hands, as well as mortal injury for the masculine mind, in the noose around his tortured mind. Why is he tortured?
If indeed the husk of the feminine form is turned away from view of the mirror, then she does not see him. She does not see him in the Kierkegaardian sense. Thus his agony. And what of bonds? This is not about bondage, nor deviancy. The ciphers of "rope" or "hanging along the weight of gravity" in its various transformations, gives this image the depth of meaning for me. The dynamic relationship in the image is then sophisticated beyond recognition (almost).
Again, the artist' use of light - this time to foreground near equivalence between the bright white of the feminine husk and that of the mirror - both balance the darkness in the image. Yet the focal point - which will it be? The viewer chooses. Either/or. Either the white dress or the pale light in the mirror? Either choice, is the same choice - it leads to entry into the closet of the photographer's anima, through identification (and shock) with either of the feminine or masculine forms. And here I fail to go any further, unless I borrow from Jungian psychology to make explicit what Kierkegaard has already made explicit (using female archetypes, and shadow projections in the mirror to render sense of the dynamic within the image, such reason then explains why the artist was fated to be in this relation), or using Sartrean psychobabble to recognise how the last regard of the photographer, in viewing the noose, is one in which male power is used in self-destructive fantasy.
Yet this form of explicitness is likely to alienate and perturb the modern viewer. Perhaps the shock is unavoidable, as the theme of rupture and disintegrated union is too.
Turning away from psychology, which can only fail in its approach towards the spirit of an image, wherefore then, are the traces of religious and spiritual influences? My head turns to Simone Weil, the female philosopher, and unknown inheritor of Kierkegaardian influences who reminded me once a time that everything [in this image] is controlled through light and gravity, the same forces which dominate the universe. It is gravity which intrigues me, because here, the disintegrated union is pulled towards a conjoint hell. Only grace opposes gravity. And that is not here. The horizontal relationship between woman and man has failed, and only the vertical relation, structured between opposing poles of gravity and grace is the tension left in this image. And every movement of the psyche [soul] falls under the same guiding principles of gravity. Grace excepting. Without grace therefore, gravity pulls this union into disintegration along various axes; the power struggle between man and woman is the fallout of the closet, bursting with existential emptiness; gravity imposes a death on the artist through the constriction of a life without substance, and as reflection, the corporeal versus spiritual tension remain embedded in the (bedroom) chamber where the wardrobe is placed. Thus, the Sartrean or the existentialist' void in the closet. After this rupture, only grace, then can restore the artist from such certain fate.
The overturned stool works as a figuration of an already completed suicide act to my mind. Why then does the viewer not see the corpse? Ahh - because man is reflection, and woman is substance. What is there to see, if the feminine husk, who can restore the male artist does not see him? Then the viewer too fails to see him, unless the viewer enters into the male mind. Thus, for me, the ghost of an artist is there, strung out - hanging so clearly in the noose. Can't you see? The death that the artist dies is one in which the weight is carried in his mind, when the substance of his union is wrenched from him. And here he is reflection. There is no witness to his death: that is the solitary fate so disturbingly captured in the heartaching power of this image.
Jason Stephens