Evoking the uncanny that lies behind the reality
Unheimlich
A recent exhibition at the Fotomuseum,Winterthur, Switzerland.
Anna Gaskell’s work can also be seen in the exhibition Anna Gaskell
at the Museum of Modern A rt ,O x fo r d ,U K , until June 27, 1999.
S
igmund Freud would, no doubt,
have had something to say about
the nickname we’ve given to our
first cloned media star, Dolly the
Sheep. Not only does its jolliness belie
the deep anxieties that accompany
such success, but the name Dolly also
alludes to one of Freud’s primary cri-
teria for the evocation of a
feeling of uncanny - n e s s —
namely, a confusion between
the animate and the inani-
mate, commonly felt in look-
ing at “ wa x work figures,
dolls, and automata”.
The immaculately designed
Fotomuseum, in Winterthur,
Switzerland, is host to an
exhibition of five contempo-
rary European and American
p h o t o gr a p h e rs — Va n e s s a
Beecroft, Anna Gaskell, Dana
Hoey, Natacha Leseur, and
Wendy McMurdo—that takes
its title from Freud’s 1919
essay “Unheimlich” or “The
U n c a n ny ” . Although it is
clearly the subjects of these
p h o t o graphs that have
solicited their selection—
McMurdo’s doppelgängers,
B e e c r o f t ’s tableaux viva n t,
G a s k e l l ’s “Alice in Wendy McMurdo’s Helen, Sheffield 1996
Wo n d e r l a n d ” wo r l d , a n d
Leseur’s attractive-repulsive body-art
made from meat and foodstuffs—it is
also the photographic medium itself
t h at evokes a number of Freud’s
“uncanny” effects.
In McMurdo’s photographs we see
children fight with, gaze at, and sleep-
walk past their doubles. I reassure
myself that it must be digital manipu-
lation that allows the artist to clone her
subjects, but it is still unsettling. At a
more basic level, though, there is
inevitably a simultaneous and slightly
spooky sense of presence and absence
in the photographic portrait. Attempts
to “capture” lifelikeness are always
countered by underlying knowledge of
the stillness of the two-dimensional
image. As Roland Barthes writes in
Camera Lucida (New York: Hill &
Wang, 1981) “the photograph carries
its referent with it, as the condemned
man to the corpse in certain tortures”.
McMurdo draws on another con-
temporary anxiety. Her photographs of
children are set in typical nurseries or
playrooms, but they seem to be hypno-
1890
Hitchcock’s Vertigo, the women are
tised, made still, staring straight ahead.
It takes me a few minutes to realise
that this is another trick of the camera.
In fact, the children have been magi-
cally displaced from computers: the
deletion of the screen and keyboard in
front of them, and the neat arrange-
ment of dolls and toy wooden animals
behind them, adds to the uncanny
impression that these small children
are only part animate, or conversely,
that they have become part auto-
m atic—logged into the computer-
machine.
Beecroft’s photographs of her per-
f o rmances continue the doubling
theme. Freud wrote that the appear-
ance of one’s double—though origi-
nally conceived of as a guardian spirit
that effected, according to Otto Rank
in 1914, “an energetic denial of the
power of death”—has now “become a
thing of terror, just as after the collapse
of their religion, the gods turned into
demons”. In Beecroft’s work, we see
rows of what appear to be identical
women, standing or sitting, staring
blankly ahead. The uncanny effect of
doubling is exacerbated by the less
than perfect verisimilitude of the dop-
pelgängers. Upon closer inspection, it
becomes apparent that Beecroft’s
women are not identical but that they
have been fabricated to appear as such.
Like Madeleine’s double in Alfred
treated as tabulae rasae onto which like-
ness can be projected—applied in the
form of make-up, wigs, and uniform
clothing. From a distance, the effect is
one of regularity. Close to, the false
eyelashes and fingernails are freakishly
obvious, the artifice revealed. Beecroft
selected and made-up the women who
appeared in her 1995–98 performances
to resemble hers e l f. The wo r k
becomes, then, like a multiple self-
portrait. In painted or sculpted form,
portraits have always claimed
immortality for the subject.
In this work, the mutability
and mortality of its ve ry
substance serves to fragment
that sense of self, to deny the
eternal.
Gaskell and Hoey make
work that brings out a crucial
element in unders t a n d i n g
F r e u d ’s essay : t h at of the
proximity of “heimlich” and
“unheimlich”. Heimlich,
Freud reveals, can mean both
“familiar” or “homely” and
“concealed from sight, hid-
den”. Unheimlich, then, is an
unexpected return of some-
thing once familiar, thought
to be repressed. Hoey’s pho-
tographs—a woman walking
her dog in the woods, three
girls attempting to cross a
small stream—are of ordinary
situations that somehow inti-
mate a sense of foreboding.
G a s k e l l ’s exquisitely constru c t e d
pieces (like film stills) conjure up a
sunny world of wholesome little girls.
But as the series progresses, dark shad-
ows are cast over the innocent primary
colours. The childhood games depicted
have a menacing edge; the girls betray
their sugar-and-spice image.
Freud suggested that although we in
the 20th century believe ourselves to
have surmounted superstition, substi-
tuting rationality, those old beliefs still
exist, buried in our consciousness,
“ready to seize any confirmation”.
Unheimlich exploits that repressed ten-
dency, evoking the uncanny that lies
behind the reality we take for granted.
As the exhibition’s curator says, “the
uncanny is no longer manifested in
deep dark forests as it is in fairy tales, it
is around every corner of everyday
life”.
Catherine Wood
153 Grove Lane, Camberwell,
London SE5 8BG, UK
THE LANCET • Vol 353 • May 29, 1999