Introduction:

So much of today’s photography…fails to touch upon the hidden life of the

imagination and fantasy which is hungry for stimulation. The documentary photograph

supplies us with facts or drowns in humanity, while the pastoralist, avant-garde or

conservative, pleases us with aesthetically correct composition---but where are the

photographs we can pray to, that will make us well again, or scare the hell out of us?

Most of mankind’s art for the past 5,000 years was created for just those purposes. It

seems absurd to stop now.

-Arthur Tress

The question that Arthur Tress asks concerning the lack of creative expression in

modernist photography has been the concern of many emerging photographers over the

last thirty years. Modernist photography was for the most part concerned with

formalism; emphasizing pattern, composition, and various other formal elements, but

excluding or at least marginalizing any sense of narrative structuring. The rest of

twentieth-century photography was focused on documentation; of which even the

slightest manipulation was a heresy to the kings of photographic objectivity and positivist

scrutiny. Photography desperately tried to maintain it’s authority as the one true recorder

of objective reality, with the photographer as the human eye behind the mechanical one.

The photographer may bring a degree of human involvement though her decision of

when to click the shutter or where to point his viewfinder, but other than that was

expected to leave the rest up to the divine lady Fortuna who was their god. However, as
that century reached its gloaming state and positivism had been shaken to its core by the

ever subjectifying experience of individuals more comfortable with relativism and the

enigmas of perceived reality, certain photographers began to question the validity of the

documentarian. These photographers felt that they should no longer be the slave’s of

Lady Fortuna’s mundane offerings, they decided that they need become their own

masters and cast off the shackles and binds that forced them to be mere “recorders of

reality” and instead become the creative gods of their own fantastic, constructed, worlds.

These brave new photographers began to work in what is now called the “directorial

mode”, imagining and creating environments that were “constructed realities” of which

they had creative control (Hoy; 6). This was a significant artistic direction as it moved

photography into more current streams of creative endeavor, re-aligning itself with

painting and sculpture which never completely left the creative or narrative stage. In fact

this kind of “staged photography” relied on and borrowed heavily from these estranged

older cousins, incorporating performance, installation, and time-based narratives into its

oeuvre. Beyond its formal nods to sculpture and painting, directorial photography

coincided with post-modernist deconstruction, which informed this art with a leaning

toward direct and even literal appropriation from the art historical vaults. Although

significant directional change in fine art photography placed it more at the center of the

contemporary art arena, the idea of the staged photograph is certainly nothing new; and

although it was almost completely abandoned by the modernists and documentarians its

conception was almost simultaneous with the first photographic prints.

Historical and Social Background

 There have been examples of staged photography since the very beginning of that art’s

history. Hippolyte Bayard, who is credited with having a major role in the invention of

photography, took a self portrait of himself as a drowned man in 1840 (fig.1). In this

picture is an inclusion of “theatrical props and an implied narrative”, a narrative that is

contextualized based on Bayard’s feeling of despair after the French government failed to

compensate him for his invention (Weis; 96). Many other nineteenth century

photographers of note used sets and costumes to add narrative elements to their picture as

well. Among them was Oscar Gustave Rejlander, who not only created elaborate sets

and employed actors, but also developed the first photographic collage techniques using

parts of many different photographic negatives to create one complex picture (fig.2).

Despite these highly rigorous and creative endeavors stage photography became the

subject of derision from positivist thinkers at the turn of the century. This attitude was

carried through most of the twentieth century, with the exclusion of some of the more

erudite modernists like Man Ray, and Bunuel. However in the early days of

deconstructivist post-modernism, staged photography began to be employed again by

artists like Cindy Sherman and Duane Michaels (figs.3 and 4.). While Duane Michaels

might still be considered a late modernist with his emphasis on looking inward and

“plumbing the imagination or subjective states” (Hoy; 7), Cindy Sherman is a truly post-

modern photographer and with her invented but still familiar “film still photographs” she

“deconstructs the simulacra circulated for mass consumption” (Hoy; 7). Duane Michals

and Cindy Sherman are just two of the many photographers who have been using the

staged, directorial, mode of photography for any number of reasons. Whether late-

modernist or postmodernist and for whatever the reason, photographers who work in this
way operate “ not only as artist, but also author, director, set designer, lighting engineer,

costumer, casting chief, and sometimes star” (Hoy; 9). The reasons that many

photographers are choosing to work in this way are extremely diverse and their themes

consist of an almost endless variety. It is not so much what their works are about that

binds these photographers together, it is rather the break from a literal description of

reality and a choice to exert creative control over the worlds that they create.

Analysis of Works

The role that painting plays in the directorial mode of photography cannot be

understated and the work of Yasumasa Morimura is a perfect example of not only

painterly techniques and compositions, but also the cultural mining of art history that so

many of these new photographers employ. Morimura goes through a painstaking process

in order to accurately interpret a 2-dimensional painting into a 3-dimensional space and

then into a 2-dimensional photograph (how many dimensions is that!?). In his “Princess

A.” (Fig 5.) there is present a very painterly style. Both the subject matter and the style

its execution are very noticeably from Western art history. A fact that is remarkable

considering Morimura’s cultural background. Where another photographer might have

appropriated a figure that was more obviously culturally representative, Morimura uses

his choice of subject matter (from a Velazquez painting) to comment on how inundated

with Western imagery and ideology the non-westerner has become and how that affects

his identity, “instead (of a western female model), I am there with a very clearly Asian

looking face -and moreover a man- an aging adult- posing as Princess Margarita. A

viewer who is at all familiar with the canon of western art will likely experience

estrangement when looking at Daughter of art history: princess A. This picture of things
gone amiss, imbalanced, distorted, disturbing and strange serves as a psychological

portrait of myself having been born and raised as a Japanese man. Rather than pretend not

to see this imbalance, I accept it as characteristic of my psychological make-up and have

tried to express it as such” (Morimura: 114)

Another artist who uses the directorial mode of photography is Duane Michals, who is

interested in using staged photography to create a discourse concerning metaphysical

themes and the mysterious world of the unseen. Duane Michals started off as a “straight”

photographer, slavishly recording the scenes that chance and natural environments

provided him. However he became disillusioned with this kind of art as not being a

vehicle that would allow him to be as creative as he needed to be in order to address the

issues that concerned him. Michals has this to say about himself as an artist, “I believe in

fantasy. What I can’t see has infinitely more meaning than what I can see…the things

one cannot see are the most significant” (Kohler; 32). Michals believes that photographic

subject matter should come from the mind of the photographer and not be limited to what

serendipitously passes in front of his eyes. The kind of staging that Michals does

involves actors (often himself) of regular seeming people in narrative sequences. The

kind of psychological focus that Michals is interested in is very apparent in his piece The

Chance Meeting (fig.6, 1970). In this series of six photographs a narrative unfolds that is

mysterious yet familiar. Michals directs the scenario in such a way that the viewer is

forced into the position of narrator. This is done by creating a third person perspective

since the viewer builds his/her perception of the scene from one panel to the next,

eventually knowing more than the subjects do. This kind of forethought and planned

response is indicative of staged photography.

Conclusion

Staged or Directorial photography is an important new genre of art to teach because of

its emphasis on the artist as creator rather than recorder. If we want students to be

involved in the art making process we need to give them ways to develop there own

ideas. Staged photography does not have to be a means in itself. Staged photography can

also be used as a method of ideation, where the photographs become sketches for

paintings, sculptures, or films. Students who learn about photography in this mode will

be able to better understand the thought process that goes into a work of art. Most

importantly they will begin to understand that creating art, no matter what the medium,

should be a creative process and not just an exercise in mimicry.

 Works Cited

Kohler, Michael (1989). Constructed Realities: The Art of Staged Photography.

Switzerland: Kunstverein Munchen