Alfred_Stieglitz_and_Wolfgang_Tillmans__Abstraction_and_Emotional_Communication

Alfred Stieglitz and Wolfgang Tillmans: abstraction and emotional communication Since its very beginning, photography has always been used as a powerful medium to communicate emotions, messages and sensations. Abstraction is a way to escape from the symbolic implications of the known. This mechanism acts through two phases. The first one, that I like to refer to as recognition, where the subject matter is recognised for what it is. In this context, it is perhaps helpful to consider Plato’s thoughts: for him, ideas are some sort of archetype of things, a combination of essential features that allow us to identify all things for what they are. The second phase, which I call association, is where the symbolic connections are made with the recognised subject matter. When we look at an abstract piece of art our brain tries to compare what our eyes see to the ideas, but either there is no objective correspondence with the known, or the subject matter in itself, however recognisable, does not contain meaning deep enough to fully understand the image. Consequently we are forced to build a direct emotional link with the image, as it is the only instrument we can use to construe it. This raises new questions and objections, such as ‘what exactly can be defined as abstract'’ and ‘different minds can create different emotional links’. I think that the boundaries of the abstract lay in the artist’s intention. In other words, if the artist doesn’t want the viewers to recognise the subject matter, then the piece is abstract. Of course, this is obvious in completely abstract pieces of work (comparable to the work of abstract painters like Mondrian or Kandinsky), but it is less blatant when it comes to macro or formalist photography. As for the subjectivity of the emotional interpretation, again it is the photographer’s choice to leave free interpretation or to try to funnel the viewers into a specific state of mind. In this analysis I will compare two very different artists. Alfred Stieglitz (1864 - 1948) surely needs no introduction, as he is one of the very best american masters of the late 19th and early 20th century, who fought for photography to be accepted as an art form and ran different art galleries in New York, promoting modern art. Wolfgang Tillmans, born over a century after Stieglitz, is a german artist who explored the very foundations of photography itself, often using abstraction as a mean of freeing the image from the known. These two very accomplished photographers have used photography in a number of different ways, but for the purpose of analysing the use of abstraction through their work, I am going to compare specific series of images from Stieglitz and Tillmans. Of all Stieglitz’s work, I’m going to consider the Equivalents series, a set of images of clouds that Stieglitz created in order to express the profound feelings he was experiencing while taking those images. The ultimate purpose was to use the image as an emotional bridge with the viewer, thus arousing those same feelings he was experiencing while taking the photographs in the viewer. The idea of photographing clouds started from a statement by Waldo Frank, who wrote that the power of Stieglitz’s photographs ultimately lied in the power of his sitters. Stieglitz was amazed by this statement, and he decided to make a series of images of clouds, to prove that his photographs were ‘not due to subject matter —not to special trees, or faces, or interiors, to special privileges— clouds were there for everyone —no tax as yet on them— free’ (Stieglitz, 1923, p. 255). Also, it was a technical challenge, as until the 1920s panchromatic photographic emulsion was not widely available, so until then Stieglitz had to struggle with orthochromatic emulsion, which would be more sensible to the blue end of the light spectrum, thus resulting in overexposed images of skies and clouds. He first created a set of ten images which he entitled Music: A Sequence of Ten Cloud Photographs, which he exhibited in 1923 at the Anderson Galleries in New York. In 1924, motivated by the wide success of the exhibition, he arranged a second major exhibition of another cloud series which he called Songs of the Sky. He kept photographing clouds until mid 1930s, and started calling the series Equivalents, which is the name they are known as today. The name Equivalents means that, for Stieglitz, those images are an equivalent of the emotional state he was experiencing while shooting, as if he could somehow record that state through the picture, and re-experience it later when looking at the image. Wolfgang Tillmans produced many abstract series, but the ones I want to consider are those named Blushes and the two that, as Tillmans himself writes (Tillmans, 2011, p. 24), developed from it, Freischwimmer and Urgency. These images achieve a level of abstraction that is usually typical of modern paintings, and the creative process that leads to their creation can be referred to as photographic in a very particular way. Tillmans in fact did not use any camera for these images, but still used light sources and light-sensitive paper in the darkroom. It is important to understand that every piece of this series is unique, as the process is not repeatable. It is somehow left to chance to create a beautiful image. In a comparison with painting, Tillmans writes about these images that ‘as the eye recognises these as photographic, the association machine in the head connects them to reality, whereas a painting is always understood by the eye as mark making by the artist’ (2011, p. 24). In other abstract works, Tillmans uses the results of a paper jam in his processing machine as pieces of work, or deliberately uses dirty processing machines and exhausted chemicals, as if his intention was to commit the artistic creation to the machines themselves. I think that with this Tillmans is mocking the art world by creating a work that fits perfectly in the abstract art world, but is not intentionally created with a mark making process by the artist. With Blushes, Freischwimmer and Urgency Tillmans induces our brain to associate the image with liquidity and colours, but then he specifies that the creation process is completely dry, almost as to highlight our association error. But it is clear that Tillmans really values errors in the creation process, and in fact he writes that he regards chance and control as equally powerful (2011, p. 23). With this elevation of the value of error, I think Tillmans is also saying that disruptions and imperfections can happen in our lives, but we should not necessarily think of them as obstacles. They can also be accepted as part of our lives and considered as opportunities and inspirations for our future (Tillmans, 2011). So the use of abstraction in the two artists’ work is extremely different. In both we can of course find the pursuit of pure visual beauty, which is one of the essential features that abstract art usually shows, but this is just a superficial layer of meaning. Deeper, we find a common purpose of emotional communication, which is also a fundamental feature of abstract art, but a much more complex one. Stieglitz is trying hard to replicate his own feelings through the capture of a clouded sky, but ultimately he aims to build an emotional bond with the viewer, so that they can feel his the same emotions. Tillmans, on the other hand, uses a more complex communicating system. He is perfectly aware that his works trigger an immediate association as our brain tries to match the images with the most similar known things, in this case, as Tillmans himself explains (2011, p. 23), skin, hair, pigments dissolving in water, shooting stars. But once we compare this awareness with his creation process, we realise that because of the uniqueness and unpredictability of the final outcome for every image, Tillmans is not really interested in what are the emotions that he is communicating, as long as it is communicating some. Nevertheless, he insists that ‘it’s our humanity, our brain, that brings life to it [the raw material]. What matters is how we shape the things on the paper for it to somehow become a representation of life and make intentions and emotions visible’ (2011, p. 23), although it seems that Tillmans ultimately leaves to us the emotional interpretation of his art. I totally agree that it is our humanity that brings life to it, but in this case it works better in the other way around. I think it is more the viewer’s brain that gives an emotional interpretation of the art piece while analysing it rather than the artist guiding the viewer’s emotion, as it was in Stieglitz’s series, Equivalents. It is also worth mentioning that Tillmans’ main interest does not lie in the emotional communication of his works, but in a creation-based research about the very essence of photography, merely intended as light poured on light-sensitive material. ‘When does a picture become a picture'’ is one of the questions he tries to address with the series Blushes (2011, p. 23). Because they lived in very different artistic periods, Stieglitz’s communication means were much simpler than Tillmans’, but this does not make them worse of less efficient. Actually, I find that the human mind is somehow attracted to simplicity and neatness, and therefore the communication aim is much more successful in Stieglitz’s images than in Tillmans’.  Bibliography HOFFMAN, K. (2011) Alfred Stieglitz - A Legacy of Life. Yale University Press - NewHaven and London. TILLMANS, W. (2006) Freedom From The Known. Germany: Göttingen Steidl. TILLMANS, W. (2007) Manual. Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König. TILLMANS, W. (2011) Abstract Pictures. Germany: Hatje Cantz. VERWOERT, J., HALLEY, P. and MATSUI, M. (2002) Wolfgang Tillmans. London: Phaidon. Sitography www.jnevins.com/steiglitzclouds.htm (Last accessed 19/05/2013) http://sandrakontos.wordpress.com/2012/12/14/alfred-stieglitz-equivalents (Last accessed 19/05/2013) www.wikipedia.org (Accessed from 05/05/2013)