Thesis by Nicholas Middleton
First Accessed 10th March 2019
Abstract:
"This essay discusses the medium of photography through the application of psychoanalysis: it attempts to demonstrate how photography can be constructed as 'uncanny' on a theoretical level. Thus it describes what is understood by the term 'uncanny' specifically from Sigmund Freud's essay Das Unheimliche ('The Uncanny'), how this relates to photography and how the idea of the 'uncanny' has been interpreted in later theory. To relate the 'uncanny' to photography, the subject of photography is considered with reference to Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida; concerning the semiotics of photography, which has relevance in the confusion of the symbolic and imaginary in the uncanny, and his discussion of how the presence of Death is felt in the Photograph, which in turn relates back to the concept of the double, as an aspect of the uncanny, and how this informs our understanding of photography."
In his thesis Middleton attempts to align the converging ideas of photography and the uncanny with reference to Roland Barthes "Camera Lucida" and Freuds essay "The Uncanny". Whereas my work is concerned with creating specifically "uncanny" photographs, i.e. images that engender the feeling of uncanny within the viewer, Middleton is arguing that photography as genus is uncanny. The essay references other theories of the uncanny, and critiques of both Freud and Barthes, including work by Dolar who in turn references Lacan.
"But imagine that one could see one's mirror image close its eyes: that would make the object as gaze appear in the mirror. This is what happens with the double, and the anxiety that the double produces is the surest sign of the appearance of the object" Dolar (1991) cited in Middleton (2005). The object is essentially a representation of ones subjective self-awareness, the ego gained at the point of the mirror Stage* according to Lacan (Hewitson, 2010), and at the point the reflection distinguishing itself (in this case via closing its eyes) ones self-awareness (and thus their ego) is lost and what appears is a double that one would analyse with the gaze one would apply to any but ones self.
"Perhaps this aspect of the photograph, by the nature of its veracity - by removing subjective vision - instill an ego-less mode of seeing, in which the stripping of identity produces the very anxiety of the uncanny." Here it seems to me Middleton is implying that as the photograph is a double like the blinking reflection above, because it is not a reflection, we are not directly connected or able to control or constitute it like we would our reflection, we view it as a double with the analytical gaze I spoke of before. It is us but it is not us. It is home but unhomely, unheimlich, uncanny.
During the last section of part two of Middletons Thesis, he compares the photograph to cinema, and reconciles the uncannyness of photography with the non-uncannyness of cinema. " However, if both are indexical, they are not read in the same way. The imposed narrative of the cinema, implied in any series of successive images, means that 'the unfolding as such tends to become more important than the link of each image to its referent'". Its interesting that while photography has a natural inherent uncannyness to it, cinema, does yet, yet can have it applied to it, especially when you consider that my initial inspirations that lead me to research the uncanny were video games, wich as the name suggests is more closely related to cinema than it is to photography.I think it worth mentioning that I feel the photographic uncanny that Middleton is discussing in his thesis is more of a latent uncanny that one would feel when considering photography as an institution, where as for my work I am interested in creating a more immediate effect on my audience mimetic of enigmatic video games such as Silent Hill and the photographic works of Gregory Crewdson. This does not, however, disconnect Middletons ideas and research from my own, concepts such as the Double, and the split of the Id and the Ego, do in fact have a relation to my work in terms of self reflection and exploration, which are themes I intend to explore within my practice. Perhaps the idea of splitting the Ego and the Id could be further explored in my work.
In part three of his thesis Middleton discusses the Uncanny and its relationship with death, citing Roland Barthes when he discuses the photograph of Lewis Payne waiting to be executed ("This will be and this has been"). Concluding that death is the "ultimate incarnation of the abstract that is uncanny". While death is not a theme of my work, I find the concepts relating to time and death interesting and I note a connection between them and my original inspirations, Silent Hill and Dear Esther, both of which have strong narratives relating to death. In the case of Dear Esther (The Chinese Room, 2012), the game uses ghost like figure hidden in the landscape, relating the narrative death even before the player is really aware of that part of the story-line, and when not immediately noticed the ghosts may add a sense of being watched, of fear of something out there, of the unknown. In my own photography, on the odd occasion I have added ghost like figures to my urban landscapes inspired by Dear Esther, to add a punctum to otherwise unsuccessful and banal images. These symbols of death have been helping to add to the sense of unease in my pictures, and quite often I find the work to be more successful because of them, due to the increased sense of the uncanny, so while my work is not explicitly or intentionally about death, the reference is there regardless.
In conclusion, Middleton regards Dolars conception that the uncanny is a product of enlightenment, of modernity, and in turn it is appropriate that photography, as a modern technological advancement, would appear to epitomize uncanny. Towards the end Middleton ponders the semiotics of the word "Taking" in relation to photography " photographs are not 'made' but 'taken' - an acquisitive act ". It is almost aggressive, but could also be considered sly, like a theif. Either way their is an " attempt, a desire to negate the effect of death, but effectively this hastens it, multiplies it, every photograph being an unconscious reminder of death (being, like the double, an uncanny "harbinger of death")" so essentially no matter what direction I take with my photographic practice their will always be some relation to death involved weather I intend it or not, and perhaps within that a sense of the uncanny. The question for me is how to I harness that inherent uncannyness and push it within my work to the point that my audience experience it with immediacy, rather than with time, analysis and research.
*The mirror stage is a Psychoanalytical concept regarding the creation of the ego in a child at the moment it first recognizes an image of itself, for example its own reflection in a mirror.
Barthes, Roland Camera Lucida, Jonathon Cape, London,1982
Freud, S. (1919) The “Uncanny”. [online] Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Available at: https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/freud1.pdf [Accessed 6 Dec. 2018]
Hewitson, Owen. 2010. 'What does Lacan Say about… the Mirror Stage? – Part I'. Available at: http://www.lacanonline.com/2010/09/what-does-lacan-say-about-the-mirror-stage-part-i/. [Accessed 16th April].
Middleton, Nicholas. 2005. 'Photography and The Uncanny'. Available at: www.nicholasmiddleton.co.uk/thesis. [Accessed 10 March. 2019].
The Chinese Room. 2012. Dear Esther, Digital Download, Windows 10.