Remnants of the Index:

Hanging on to Photographic
Values – The Installation Shot -
Still searching - Fotomuseum
Winterthur
Having reflected on the selfie and how it connects to the canonical qualities
attributed to the analogue photograph, in this last blog post, which
concludes my series of posts for the “still searching” blog, I will discuss the
installation shot as a second example of how traditional values associated
with the classic photographic image continue to live on as part of online
culture.

With the installation shot that documents contemporary art exhibitions, a

specific image genre has emerged that builds on another traditional
photographic value: the image as an objective imprint. In recent years, a
specific pictorial genre has surfaced for presenting exhibitions online. Most
frequently the artworks in such an installation shot are set against a white,
pristine background. The image bears no traces of human presence, is
perfectly lit with artificial light and shot with a wide-angle lens. This
specific aesthetic has been featured especially prominently on
Contemporary Art Daily, probably the most important online image blog
dedicated to presenting art online. Beyond this blog, this kind of image has
also become increasingly pervasive elsewhere, as the way to successfully
show art online.1

Sascha Braunig at Foxy Production, New York. Installation view from

Contemporary Art Daily. Photo credit: Mark Woods

Translating the aesthetics of the white cube into a pictorial composition,

these photographs would like to make us believe that no human has ever
touched these perfectly retouched images. They show no stains, no
blemishes, no bodies, just works, well lit against a backdrop of pristine
white. As such, and by removing all the worldly, bodily, potentially dirty or
otherwise imperfect traces of our daily lives, these images create the
illusion of absolute objectiveness.

In doing so, they seem to represent pure objects, void of human

interference between the object and its representation, a quality that
traditionally has been attributed to analogue photography. By smartly
staging art objects in front of a lens – using proper lighting, positioning the
works against a white backdrop and choosing the right angle – and then
digitally enhancing the objective properties of the image – by taking out
blemishes and shadows, enhancing color contrasts etc. – this
photographic value becomes a set of aesthetic properties enforced by
digital means. Interestingly, a quality that is linked to the technical
properties of an analogue photograph – the direct, objective imprint of
light on paper – now becomes aestheticized. Even though we might know
that these images have been retouched, stylized and worked on, we still
accept them as documents, desiring and having internalized that which the
photographic image continues to stand for: objective truth. Going even
further, these images can be read as the amplification of the objective
properties Bazin describes: “For the first time, between the originating
object and its reproduction there intervenes only the instrumentality of a
nonliving agent. For the first time an image of the world is formed
automatically, without the creative intervention of man.” Ironically with
the installation shot, the effects produced by the nonliving agent have
intensified, although they are now created by human beings; the aesthetic
effects that further enhance this non-human status and these objective
properties are indebted to the human labor invested in these images.

“When seeing an image of an exhibition, we assume that what we see is the

documentation of an actual event – a shared and witnessed reality.”
Quote/screenshot from Soy Disseminated by Rebecca Stephany and Nora
Turato, 2014
“In digital photography, any lens shorter than 15mm is considered ultra-
wide. Shot with an ultra-wide lens, a living room becomes a reception hall
with tiny benches, an exhibition space becomes a cathedral with tiny dots.”
Quote/screenshot from Soy Disseminated by Rebecca Stephany and Nora
Turato, 2014

“LED lights, we don’t do spotlights.” Quote/Screenshot from Soy

Disseminated by Rebecca Stephany and Nora Turato, 2014

The reality produced by the installation shot feeds back into the actual
staging of artworks in gallery and exhibition spaces. Aiming to mimic the
aesthetic that has been proven to circulate images online so successfully,
the installation shot influences the way objects are presented as part of
exhibitions.2 As such, it exemplifies what Vilém Flusser described some
thirty years ago: “Instead of representing the world, they [images] obscure
it until human beings’ lives finally become a function of the images they
create. Human beings cease to decode the images and instead project
them, still encoded, into the world ‘out there,’ which meanwhile itself
becomes like an image – a context of scenes, a state of things. . . The
technically produced images that are all around us magically restructure
our reality resulting in a global image scenario.”3 The image scenario
created by the installation shot thus informs how art is presented in
physical exhibition spaces. As such, exhibiting works in galleries and other
venues becomes a function of feeding back into the online image stream of
documentation shots, further enhancing the “truthfulness” and objective
quality of these images.

When considering the installation shot and how the value of objectivity
continues to inform this particular image genre, one can observe
objectivity as being enhanced and intensified in a twofold manner: firstly,
through an aesthetizication (digital enhancement) of its defining
properties and secondly through the dynamic produced from the reality
created by the image. This example shows that despite the fact these
images become objectively less objective, their effects would like to make
us to believe exactly the opposite. The value of objectiveness thus lives on,
despite the fact and enhanced by the fact that the photograph’s direct
relation to the object has been layered by human interference and digital
manipulation.