OCA preloader logo
Monkey's Wedding? - The Open College of the Arts

To find out more details about the transfer to The Open University see A New Chapter for OCA.

Monkey's Wedding? thumb

Monkey's Wedding?


Not a phrase I have heard before, but nevertheless an interesting video by photographer Paul Graham. I was particularly taken by his definition of good art – “it’s about many things, it’s not just about one idea or one concept – it’s open, it’s about many different things and it’s often about more than the artist intended” I think that works for me.
The images in the background are taken from the project ‘The Shimmer of Possibility’ and can be seen here


Posted by author: Genevieve Sioka

12 thoughts on “Monkey's Wedding?

  • I like to think of it as the classic 3 ring Venn diagram of set theory.
    The ring for the image represents the set of all its possible connotations. The rings for the photographer and the viewer represent their personal symbolic lexicons.
    The intersection of all three sets are where the viewer understands what the photographer understood.
    The other three intersections represent what the viewer reads in the image that the photographer doesn’t, what the photographer reads in the image that the viewer doesn’t and finally what’s common to the viewer and the photographer but not represented in the image.
    The area of the image circle that the photographer’s circle doesn’t intersect with is the ‘more than the artist intended’.
    I’ve found that viewers, or the passing of time, can educate you into extending your intersection with your images.
    Well it’s a model that works for me. ‘ }

      • Wouldn’t it be more educational to explain it in practise by looking at specific images and discussing them with students?

      • @ OCA student (sorry it appears you can’t nest any deeper on here)
        It’s not at all meant to be complicated. It’s just an attempt to formally explain to myself why viewers can react differently to the same image, on a scale from indifference to rapt engagement; or indeed explain why photographers choose to make the images they do and what separates them in their practice.
        Many years ago I saw Lartigue photographing in Carnaby Street. He was standing in the street with his Leica held concentratedly to his face looking across to Marshall street.
        Of course I stopped to watch but I couldn’t figure out for the life of me what he could be photographing; looking at him, looking where the camera was pointing, looking back to him.
        After a moment his posture changed, as if he’d released the shutter, and he moved off. So I went to stand where he was standing and still couldn’t see anything that would warrant me taking a photograph.
        Perhaps all these years of experience later I could see what Lartigue saw, or maybe not.
        In any event there was a confluence of elements, holding some meaning for him, that made it worth making an exposure.
        In writing this I’m reminded of a concept which was very influential for me that had slipped from my consciousness; Stieglitz’s idea of equivalence.
        He illustrated it brilliantly by using clouds.
        I would guess it’s a universal experience to lie on your back looking up at the clouds, seeing figures, faces, animals etcetera and pointing them out to companions, tracing them with a pointing finger until they can see what you’re seeing, or not.
        It seems to me to be a universally understood way in which to illustrate that the active image is not what is simply portrayed; the active image is what one infers the physical portrayal’s equivalent to be and it’s entirely up to you what you do or don’t see in the clouds. It depends upon the parameters of your imagination and your willingness to engage.
        In the case of the Paul Graham work it can be just a lot of pictures of a bloke mowing or a time tunnel through your experience.
        Before I found photography, in a serious way, I used to write short poems. After I found photography I realised the poems were descriptions of photographs that represented the feeling I was trying to convey; so I understood the idea of ‘equivalence’ as equivalent to metaphor.
        It seems to me that within imagery there is a range of susceptibility to metaphorical interpretation.
        On the whole, images intended to sell a product, a service or idea, strive to be universal in interpretation, we are left in no doubt about what we should instantly understand, extended viewing offering no more; its intended meaning is sharpened to a point; unless the ‘openess’ of the imagery is being used as a metaphor for the sophistication of what’s being offered, flattering the intended market.
        Paul Graham proffers possibilities, a cloudscape for you to see things in. For me this is the property that makes imagery engaging.
        Perhaps the ultimate in this openess is represented by colour field painting.
        I was listening to an interesting radio programme in which experts were asked independently about their thoughts on Mark Rothko’s work.
        They all had their own ideas; based on their experience and their knowledge of Rothko. It would appear that there is no standard model to explain his work, it can’t be decoded like a Renaissance work of art, you have to bring your personal experience into play to activate it and understand what it means to you.
        I vaguely remember the details of a particular hanging I saw of some of Rothko’s work but I vividly recall the sensation.
        It might have been the original hanging at the Tate Modern but as I recall it was four large paintings facing one another in a moderately sized square room, with the lights goboed down to just illuminate the paintings. There was no one else there, it felt like walking into a chapel.
        Standing in the middle the paintings hummed with a physical presence that fused them as objects and images. The atmosphere had a religiosity but the demeanour of the paintings was accusatory and vengeful.
        Was that experience contained within the paintings, seeded by Rothko, or was it their power as catalysts that conjured it up?
        When I went to see the Rothko exhibition there a couple of years ago there was painting after painting and thronging people; that old sensation lived in my memory but wasn’t evidenced in that hang. It seemed to me the paintings were diminished by their number and setting.

      • Thanks CliveW, That’s very helpful, the equivalence theory makes a lot of sense of ways of looking at images.
        Thinking about looking at Rothko; knowing about ideas about the sublime has also affected how I look at it, or at least it has helped me put the experience of looking at it into a context that helps me define the experience. So that makes me think that perhaps each viewer can look at an image in more than one way intentionally by looking with a different context in mind. (Although I can’t quite visualise that fitting in the Venn diagram.)

      • Well if you have knowledge of other frames of reference, that other people have devised, which you are consciously measuring the work against, then I guess it belongs in your circle; in what you are bringing to the work.
        Anyway it’s not intended to meet all existing conditions. It is a model fragment that makes sense of an aspect for me; my conjecture.
        If someone else finds a resonance in it that’s fine, if they don’t that’s fine too, rather like images; and the sublime. ‘ }

  • Very interesting short video. It’s a superb lesson on reflective commentary on a photograph and photography in general. If he were an OCA student I would say – “and don’t forget to add it to your logbook!”.
    Having a look at Graham’s photographic archive one can see how his photography has evolved and become more complex. Graham’s most recent conceptual work seems to have nothing to do with his fly-on-the-wall images of unemployment offices in the 80’s – http://www.paulgrahamarchive.com/beyondcaring.html

    • I agree about the evolution Jose – Beyond Caring is unambiguous – it shouts ‘look at this, how can you not be annoyed?’ – whereas the video shows Graham wondering about what is portrayed in his images.
      Incidentally, Beyond Caring includes one of my favourite images of all time – the baby in pink in the centre of the room. Compositionally I think it is fabulous, the old man standing on the left leads the eye past the waiting seated people to the baby, tiny in the massive room, looking as if asking itself ‘what is going on?’ [The image is found by following Jose’s link then pressing ‘next’ twice]

  • Yes I agree with Jose and was nodding my head to everything Paul Graham said; which, for me, is rather at odds with such an apparently directing title as Beyond Caring; albeit that he might not choose such a title these days.
    A Shimmer of Possibility, however, is a title which, it seems to me, does align with what he was saying.
    I was recently rather engaged by a large painting of a modern, lowly lit, night time interior. A long haired bare legged figure was just discernible reclining in a gloomy corner.
    It immediately came to me that this was Christ re-materialising in the modern world. Of course when I read the title and the artist’s statement it was nothing of the kind but I preferred my imagining of it.

  • On a broader note – the artist makes some play of the way the photos are arranged, both on the wall and in the book. If I were to submit a series of photos for assessment at Level 1 that required a specific spatial arrangement for my concept – how that that be received?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back to blog listings