Black Is Black
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| (untitled) (c) D Harris 2011 |
Buddhist thought and its
central preoccupation with the concept of impermanence also leads it to delve
into the realms of perception itself. The "appearance" of the world
as fixed and permanent on a macro level is seen as a concept of mind, conditioned
by time and space. "This floating world", a common Zen expression,
encapsulates this idea.
Buddhist thought influenced the Indian concept of
"non-duality" or Advaita Vedanta. One of
the main postulates of this idea is that when the 'I' that arises from deep,
dreamless sleep arises, the phenomenal world arises, and when the 'I' ceases
during deep, dreamless sleep, the phenomenal world ceases. In deep dreamless
sleep, who exists? What is this 'I'?
Our perception is therefore conditioned by appearances,
and appearances are conditioned by time, space, and hence perspective. Is a
rock alive? From the atomic perspective, we could say yes, because it is a
whirring of atomic and electronic motion. From the perspective of time and
space over millions of years, a rock will come to being, persist for a
duration, become dust, and then finally there will be nothing but space.
Perception is predominantly related to recognition. We
"re-cognise" appearance, and largely through language, we categorise
and identify what we "know". What we know is what we recognise. It is
difficult to identify something we have never seen before. Our cognition
furtively reorders itself through our endless mental filing cabinet to scramble
for associations. In order to get past the known, what we are conscious of,
into the unconscious, Freud used free association to let
the patient talk and reveal hidden contents of the psyche. Freud realised that
talking about the known would only reveal the known, because the ego acted as
the gatekeeper on guard.
In photography, perception is important, especially in
the area of portraiture. David Bate, in his book Photography:
the Key Concepts, regards the main tenets of portrait photography as
identity and recognition. What happens, then, if we start to manipulate the
elements of recognition and begin to reduce, remove, or transform them? How
does this affect what we identify and recognise?
If we extrapolate this idea to its limits and reduce the
elements of a photograph until it is simply black space, void of all
appearances, what effect does this have on the viewer? Identity and recognition
still exist for the viewer; they remain aware that they are looking at a
photograph of black space, but they do not see any portrait. Bodhidharma, who
brought Zen to China from India
In some sense, a photograph of black space may allow the
truest expression of who we are. Unfortunately, it does not necessarily “draw
out”, from the viewer, those very elements which may exist but of which we are
not necessarily consciously aware. Starting from a very literal and accurate
portrait photograph, as the elements of recognition are steadily removed or
reduced, the identity of the subject begins to change, and we begin to
interpret, rather than passively observe, the portrait. We begin to “project”
onto the portrait aspects of our own psyche. In this sense, such ambiguous or
incompletely defined images can reveal more about the psyche of the viewer than
less ambiguous images, and indeed more is revealed than is contained in the
images themselves. This is the basis of many “projective” psychological tests,
such as the Rorschach
Ink Blot Test.
Interestingly, when the associations that help us
to recognise and identify start to associate to more freely, we can be aware
that we are dreaming during the REM phase of sleep. If we experience these
non-logical associations whilst awake in reality, or under the influence of
certain drugs, what we call psychosis may be occurring. On a profound,
spiritual level, the great German author Hermann Hesse explored the fragmentation of the psyche towards the end of his classic novel
"Steppenwolf",
written in 1927.
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| ancient fear (c) D Harris |
Gestalt psychology’s key principles of emergence (pattern formation), and reification (the constructive aspect of perception) are similar to identity and recognition. However, what is important here, is emergence, Something emerges from somewhere. This background is the black space, the void.
Douglas Harding explored the Zen aspect of no self in his excellent 1961 book On Having No Head. Through experiments, Harding realised that the void, the black space, is behind your field of vision. Alan Watts, the great 20th century Zen interpreter and spiritual entertainer, emphasised the organism-as-environment in his view of the self as limited. That is, who you are does not end where your physical self ends (i.e. your skin), because the air you breathe and the environment from which you gain your food source is equally you, for without the atmosphere and environment, there is no you. The notion that you physically end at your skin is just a conceptual boundary. Watts' view is very similar to the Buddhist' Chain of Dependent Origination, which outlines that every compound thing has arisen through cause and effect, and is therefore, interrelated, including perception.
This black space, or void, then, is our original face. This has long been recognised in traditional Japanese and Chinese philosophy (through Taoism, Buddhism and Zen) and given a prominence in its aesthetics. An example is the lack of a vanishing point in traditional Chinese landscape painting, where the perspective is more vertical, portrait-oriented. Wasn't the use of pure black once a heretical colour in European painting? The difference in worldviews could not be more striking.
The rise of photography and its influence on impressionism in painting saw a break in the employment of the importance of background as context for adding character to portraiture, both in painting and in studio photography. In his “old fashioned” plea to the art of portrait photography, Art Principles in Portrait Photography: composition, treatment of backgrounds, and the processes involved in manipulating the plate, Otto Walter Beck very skilfully highlights how background impacts on portrait photography.
If we look at German photographer Thomas Ruff’s portraits as passport photos, the plain background and blank stares reveals little information to the viewer. This is fine as an artistic statement, but not so as a vital portrait. This is why, in my view, the American photographer Richard Avedon, once famous for the use of white backgrounds in his portraits, falls just short in his series In the American West (click on "archives") in terms of portrait photographs as art to the standard of August Sander or Diane Arbus.
Darren J Harris
Text and images (c) Darren J Harris
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