BUNGALOW BLITZ

Photography as Social Interaction

by Paul Antick

To stay in one�’s room away from the place where the party is given, or away from where the practitioner attends his client, is to stay away from where reality is being performed. The world, in truth, is a wedding. (Erving Goffman quoted in (eds) Charles Lemert & Ann Branaman, 1997:101)

Bungalow Blitz: Another History of Irish Architecture is made up of several discrete parts, the most obvious being the �work� itself; that is to say the photographs, paintings and installations which comprise the exhibition component of the project. In addition are numerous secondary materials: including conference papers, review and feature articles, and television broadcasts which, as well as providing an evaluation of the aesthetic or cultural value of the �work�, have generally sought to use it to reignite certain apposite (and often angry) debates concerning the value of popular architecture in rural Ireland. Such secondary materials tend, however, to focus on the project�s value as text – what does this collection of words, images and artefacts mean? If we wish, however, to acquire a more holistic understanding of Bungalow Blitz, one that goes beyond the text – which would seem particularly apt given the project�s own anthropological bent – then it is probably fair to say that reducing its significance to that which is most immediately apparent to us as viewers � what we see in the gallery or on the pages of a book – effectively denies access to a potentially invaluable set of insights into the projects actual, day to day �performance�.

This is not to say that focussing on the project�s ideological or textual dimensions is necessarily mistaken. Given the fact that the show quite explicitly sets out to address certain tensions that exist between traditional and popular approaches to architectural aesthetics in rural Ireland, choosing to concentrate on the political and cultural dimensions of the exhibition obviously makes a lot of sense. In fact, from this perspective what actually went on between, for instance, the photographer and his subject would appear to make little difference � what kind of conversations they had; how the act of photography was negotiated and staged and what type of conclusions one might draw from an analysis of such things. Equally, if we agree that �the unity of the text lies not in its origin but in its destination� then it follows that whatever the photographers – myself and Andrew Kearney – intended their pictures to mean is not really worth taking into account if one is primarily concerned with an evaluation of the projects� broader socio-cultural impact, if any . However, this is not to say that the photographer�s relationship with his own work and – more important perhaps – his relationship with the people he photographs, should always be regarded as superfluous. Whether it is or not very much depends on what we are trying to find out and why.

According to Simon Watney, photography, �� is not a single, self sufficient moment, but a process, inseparable from the full cycle of distribution and consumption. � For Watney, in order to arrive at a critical understanding of photography, it should ideally be considered in relation to the specific institutions of visual culture across and within which it is deployed � from fashion photography and documentary reportage to pornography, art photography, advertising and the family album � and not as an homogenous, internally coherent phenomenon that exists, as some have argued, in a privileged state of splendid social and aesthetic isolation. This approach, which clearly foregrounds the socially embedded and historically contingent nature of photography, encourages us to focus on the way in which, for example, the various �fields� of photography may be seen to articulate a range of discrete visual codes and aesthetic conventions that adhere to a set of historically specific conceptual frameworks (e.g. documentary realism = objectivity). For Watney, these conventions potentially circumscribe the way in which we, as viewers, conventionally make sense of both the discursive value of particular photographs, as well as the epistemological value of the specific genres of photography with which they are commonly identified.

While the aesthetic and epistemological differences that characterise different institutions of visual culture � fashion and social documentary for example, are important to this way of understanding photography it is also worth noting that each of these different institutions of photography can be identified with a broad range of highly distinctive presentational styles and techniques. These range from different forms of display and usage (the newspaper and the gallery), to contrasting modes of self-presentation; apparent, for instance, during the actual making of photographs; compare, for example, the paparazzi�s relatively intrusive approach to his/her subject with the more deferential mode of practice employed by the high street portraitist. However, although Watney himself, does not appear to make any qualitative distinction between the analysis of the production, distribution and consumption of photography, it arguably remains the case that, because so few contemporary accounts of photography�s socio-cultural value – particularly in an art historical context – focus on the inter-personal aspects of the actual making of images, many students of photography often make the mistake of imagining that an analysis of photography�s distribution and consumption, one that generally concentrates on the ideological dimensions of the photographic text and / or the context of its reception, is always more �revealing� than an analysis which, in contrast, foregrounds the social � or anthropological – significance of the conditions of the photograph�s immediate production.

In an attempt to address this apparent imbalance, it is precisely this aspect of photography � its status as a form of social exchange at the point of production in Bungalow Blitz – that I want to consider below. In doing so, I want to think about the extent to which the actual making of photographs is part of an inter-subjective process which is not simply determined by the �personal� relationship that obtains between a photographer and his or her subject(s), (something that John Berger, for example, tends to privilege) but is fundamentally contingent on the particular way in which certain ideologies, expectations and knowledges – all of which are inextricably bound up with our understanding of photography as, in this case, a professional practise – are expressed and combined to shape the way in which these relationships are actually acted out .

Photography and the Act of Engagement

A project like Bungalow Blitz – one which is arguably as indebted to ethnographic research traditions as it is to those developed out of the visual arts or art, architecture and design histories- is bound to involve some degree of interaction between a team of so called �experts� � professionals trained and employed in a particular field � and laypeople, for whom an understanding of the meaning of, in this case, photography and art, is largely derived from the ways in which activities like these are represented by a variety of institutions including education and the mass media.

However, although it may be the case that the layperson�s understanding of practices like these is largely contingent on the way in which she assimilates representations of them, this is not to say that such representations are necessarily impervious to certain critically motivated acts of engagement on the part of the layperson. However, it is probably fair to say that even when dominant representations of specific cultural practices are brought into question in everyday contexts, such acts often tend to be circumscribed � or framed – by a set of basic presuppositions, whereby the professional photographer is construed as a �visual expert�, the academic as an �impartial recorder of history�, the artist as �genius�, and so on. And, at the risk of sounding overly dismissive, this tends to mean that engagements of this sort often amount to little more than informal debates about value – he or she is a �good� or �bad� photographer � rather than sustained critical examinations of the reasons why terms like �good� and �bad� are used to evaluate the cultural significance of photography in the first place.

Having said that, the way in which concrete encounters between professionals and laypeople are sometimes experienced in particular social settings can, as I discovered in Co. Donegal, produce a situation where ones� assumptions and expectations of the other are, through a variety of conscious and often unconscious acts of deference and refusal, implicitly brought into question. Unsurprisingly perhaps, it would seem that a concrete encounter with someone who is actually perceived to embody all of those traits and values associated with a particular cultural institution � the professional photographer in this case – can give rise to a very different way of understanding and engaging with that institution than the rather more abstract or contemplative mode of engagement described above.

In addition, it seems clear to me now that some of those expectations and fantasies which the project�s participants often expressed in relation to myself as �photographer�, were not necessarily triggered by any idiosyncratic personality traits of my own, but were instead expressive of various ideas that the term �photography� presently infers, at least in what we might tentatively call a popular context. Perhaps one of the ways in which we might begin to understand the significance of the way in which such expectations and fantasies were acted out in Donegal is by considering the extent to which this represented an attempt by the people I photographed to not only find out who I was, or, more precisely, the nature of the role that I appeared to be enacting in relation to themselves, and the extent to which I appeared to �embrace� such a role, but (also) what kind of position or role they consequently felt �obliged� to enact in return.

When, (for example), I visited The Rock in Carrick, and suggested to Rose Byrne that I photograph her holding a wedding portrait of her husband Paul, she initially baulked at the idea, eventually agreeing only after I had reassured her that it was �just a thought�, which may or may not work out, but which was, in my �expert� opinion, worth �giving a go� . Although Rose initially imagined that posing in this way was �wrong�; that is to say �wrong� in relation to the conventions of amateur photography which I imagined had, up till then, circumscribed the production of images of Rose in the home, she reluctantly agreed to defer to my �better� judgement precisely because she was of the opinion that my judgement actually was �better�. (Or at least she felt in someway obliged to give me the impression that she thought it was.) Crucially, however, although she agreed � or felt obliged to agree – she continued to resist my authority by wilfully refusing to indulge both myself, and the imagined viewer, with a smile; the signifier par excellence of the �successful� amateur snapshot.

Apart from Rose and Paul�s home, which was identified by the project�s curator, Aoife Mac Namara, prior to my arrival in County Donegal, most of the bungalows were corralled into the project as a result of my knocking on doors of houses resembling those in my copy of Jack Fitzsimon�s 1972 edition of Bungalow Bliss, explaining what the project was all about and, finally, asking whether or not the occupants would be interested in taking part. If I managed to secure their agreement, I arranged to call round in the near future (usually a couple of days hence) when, it was agreed, I would photograph them �in situ�. Thus giving them ample opportunity to �prepare� both themselves and, more importantly perhaps, myself. At no point, however, did I indicate that it was up to them to identify a space within which they would prefer to be photographed etc. In fact, I made it quite clear to everyone involved that the photographs� overall orchestration and design would largely be down to me. Thus, the production of each image was, on the face of it, non-negotiable. However, despite the fact that my subjects always ostensibly deferred to my �expertise�, their attempts to resist my authority tended to inflect our encounters with a palpable sense of unease; something I took to be indicative of a desire on their part to resist the perceived �tyranny� of my intentions, as well as an understandable feeling of apprehension about precisely how the photographs were going to turn out in the end. Precisely how �good� did I � the self-confessed �documentary photographer� � want or need them to look? Arguably, one of the ways in which their anxieties about this were resolved � the way in which, for them, order was restored and uncertainty deferred � was through the restriction of my access to particular spaces.

Thus, although it was never made explicit, I was invariably provided with a set of subtle physical indicators as to how, or more precisely, where my subjects wished to be photographed. Although Margaret Doogan, for example, invited me to choose a space where she and her husband could be photographed, I soon realised that the only spaces that she had actually made available to me were the living room and kitchen. All of the other rooms had been shut away, behind closed doors. The same was true of Rosalyn Murray. Thus, although paying lip service to my imagined authority, both Margaret Doogan and Rosalyn Murray successfully imposed upon me their own specific aesthetic agendas. Agendas which were quite simply realised through the closing of doors and the shutting away of undesirable spaces. Arguably then, the way in which my gaze was directed towards certain spaces in the house, and away from others, amounted to a cogent form of resistance that not only appeared to represent an indirect challenge to my authority as a professional, but also an understated reminder of the fact that whatever I wanted from my subjects always apparently depended on what they were prepared to let me have of themselves.

It is worth noting that what concerned virtually all of those involved in the project was the way in which the spaces that were made available to me were actually presented. For instance, it was clear that most people had gone to considerable lengths to make sure that their homes would be seen in the best possible light, something that invariably meant making sure that everything was �neat and tidy�. This was an anxiety that was by no means gender specific. Although the bungalows� interiors were largely maintained by women � all of whom appeared to share a similar set of ideas about what does and does not constitute the look of a respectable and well maintained home, it was also the case that those spaces managed by men � the garden, for instance � were maintained in accordance with the same set of values. Danny Gillespie, for example, made it quite clear, despite my protestations, that if, as I had casually suggested, I intended to photograph the family in the garden then the lawn would have to be mown, which of course it duly was .

Danny�s fastidious attention to detail might be understood in two ways. First as a straightforward articulation of his desire to represent the Gillespie clan as a stereotypically �respectable� and conventional bourgeois family unit, but also, perhaps, as an unconscious wish to undermine the value and status of the images that he imagined I wanted to take. In other words, Danny�s attention to neatness and decoration, his impulse to idealise the domestic landscape, partly, though not entirely, succeeded in transforming what might have been a potentially straightforward set of documentary photographs (�accurate� snapshots of life �in the raw�) into images intended, I imagine, to evoke the highly stylised, visual atmosphere found on the glossy pages of an honorific lifestyle magazine such as Hello. In saying this, the poses I asked � or rather, instructed – the Gillespies to assume on their front lawn do not appear to conform with the accepted codes of contemporary honorific portrait photography at all. Thus, as much as the making of these photographs involved Danny Gillespie�s determined � yet remarkably understated – efforts to resist my imaginary wishes, it also involved an act of counter resistance on my part. One intended to undermine Danny�s desire to use me as a tool with which to seamlessly render his own fantasies about himself and his family.

Perhaps, in order to avoid overestimating � or idealising – the power of the subject during the process of representation I should, at this point, make something clear. Because what is seen through the camera�s viewfinder at the precise moment the photograph is taken is something that � for obvious reasons – can rarely be shared between the photographer and his or her subject(s), crucial features of the production process � the type of lens used (in this case, a 40mm wide angle), camera position, framing devices, lighting techniques (electronic flash and daylight), generally remain �unknown� to those being photographed. Even a fleeting facial expression, which might only remain on a person�s face for the sixtieth of a second it takes for the camera�s shutter to open and close, can potentially invest the relatively informal documentary photograph with a whole set of meanings that could barely have been imagined by the subject or the photographer. Indeed, in the case of Bungalow Blitz any available photographic meanings only became apparent once the film had been processed and the transparencies were subsequently viewed on a light box, several hundred miles away from the site of their initial production. Moreover, it was at this point that the control of photographic meaning effectively shifted away from the photographer and / or the subject, to the curator, Aoife Mac Namara; the person ultimately responsible for choosing the specific images that would eventually appear on the gallery wall, as well as those images that were destined to provide the editors of The Independent Magazine, The Sunday Times and Vogue Italia with an archive of available pictures from which they would, in turn, make their own selections.

However, it is perhaps worth reiterating that despite the fact that the way in which participants� chose to engage with the production process may have had a fairly limited impact on the eventual hermeneutic value of the photographs themselves, taking into account the form that such acts of engagement assumed �on the ground� can still provide us with a useful insight into the often ambiguous ways in which the reproduction and renegotiation of photography�s status as a discrete form of cultural production and knowledge � what it is, and who it is for – might actually be experienced in specific everyday contexts.

During my second trip to Donegal I revisited Fintra, a self-build, Hacienda style bungalow on the outskirts of Killybegs, and showed Rosalyn Murray a selection of images taken during my first trip. After a while it became clear to me that she was not pleased with the results. Because I felt rather concerned about this – which is to say embarrassed – and was therefore reluctant to discuss it further, I steered the conversation away from the photographs and, in doing so, somehow managed to secure another appointment to take more photographs later that week. When I returned, however, Rosalyn politely informed me that, whilst it would be fine for me to photograph the living room and / or the kitchen, she did not think there was much point in my taking anymore photographs of herself or her husband, Brendan, because, as she said, �we don�t photograph very well� . It was a sign of graciousness on her part perhaps, that rather than hold me directly responsible for the disappointing pictures I had taken several weeks earlier, she instead chose to displace responsibility for their �failure� onto herself and her husband. In other words, the photographs were disappointing, not because I was a �bad� photographer, but because they were �bad� subjects.

Of course, I could have pointed out that I was responsible, because it was I who had instructed them to assume such �ridiculous� poses in the first place, but I chose not to. First, because I sensed that Rosalyn was well aware of my �shortcomings� in this respect and second, because even if she was not I thought it unlikely, as a result of my producing such �poor� images, that she would allow me to do the same thing again. Thus, although my status as a professional remained intact, by virtue, perhaps, of the photographs� technically accomplished nature � something Rosalyn remarked upon � and despite the self deprecating mode of address employed by Rosalyn, clearly the extent to which she felt she could trust me to represent herself and her husband in accordance with their – or her – own fantasies about the ways in which they �should� be represented, was irrevocably undermined.

Although the often discrete ways in which people resisted my perceived authority � something that was often expressed through distorted acts of �pseudo-compliance�- Rose Byrne�s absent smile, for example – clearly informed many of my encounters during the production of Bungalow Blitz, it became apparent that despite the fact that the aesthetic strategies I employed were not always to the liking of my subjects, my identity as a �visual expert� was rarely, if ever, brought into question.

Rose Byrne mentioned on several occasions that she �hated� being photographed. However, when I asked Rose if I could look at her wedding album she seemed especially concerned that I acknowledge how appealing she looked in her wedding dress. Significantly, Rose�s enthusiasm for her wedding pictures contrasted sharply with the disappointment she clearly felt about an image of herself that appeared in The Irish Times in 1997. This was a �candid�, black and white portrait, taken by a professional photographer, featuring Rose at work in the local wool factory in Kilcar. Rose, it seemed, was appalled at the fact that she had appeared in a national newspaper �without any make up�. As part of a rather clumsy attempt to reassure Rose that she looked �fine� in the photograph, I confessed that I was personally keen on what her husband Paul called, �the natural look�. This revelation prompted Rose to ask me which women in particular I found attractive. Somewhat taken aback, and by way of another crude attempt to ingratiate myself, I told her that I liked �that woman in The Corrs.� �Oh, yeah, the one who looks like a drug addict.� said Paul. � It�s eye make up� I said. Rose nodded sagely, reassured I vainly imagined, because I, the man with the camera � erstwhile arbiter of female beauty � apparently liked women in make-up after all.

Similarly, my imagined interest in � and apparent knowledge of � the visual, prompted Rose to volunteer the following anecdote. An American friend who happened to stay at The Rock the previous summer was surprised that Rose and Paul had chosen to build it so that the living room faced the main road to Carrick, rather than the �spectacular� mountain view behind – which, I noticed, could only be fully appreciated during the act of washing up. According to Rose, she told her American friend that the reason was simple. They wanted the bungalow to be seen from the road because, as she rightly observed, �who�s gonna see the front room from the top of a mountain?�

Here Rose�s wish to be seen, apparently at the expense of wanting to see, is significant because it neatly encapsulates her attitude toward certain dominant ideas about the landscape; the fact that it should be appreciated at all. Moreover, her relative indifference toward an idea of the landscape that holds particular sway in bourgeois aesthetic discourse � the landscape as an object of passive contemplation – is, perhaps, indicative not of a particular individual�s apparent �cultural philistinism� but, rather, the heterogeneous and class specific nature of attitudes toward the land amongst the people of South West Donegal in general. Thus, as well as providing Rose with an environment through which certain potentially difficult issues such as class and taste might be implicitly broached and contained; that is, in an apparently innocuous conversation about the landscape, so the photographic encounter provided both myself and Rose with an excuse, or opportunity, to reflect on the kinds of internal differences in social orientation that apparently constitute the cultural fabric of the life of the Irish bungalow in general. Add? Cleaerly the ease with this exploration occurred can be partially ascribed to my own status as �visual expert� and rose�s compliant (quote) response�In contrast to Rose Byrne, for example, whose family history may be traced back to the impoverished existence ground out by her peasant ancestors during the mid-nineteenth century, her near neighbour, the middle class, Kilcar school teacher, Danny Gillespie, informed me that, �Whenever we come back to Donegal we�re always reminded that we live in the most beautiful place on earth.� A �fact� they are constantly reminded of whenever they �take time out� to contemplate the �breathtaking� vistas beneath their front room window.

Conclusion

The above remarks represent a brief attempt to provide some idea of the ways in which the implicit relationship that exists between photography, knowledge and power often becomes explicit during the actual making of pictures. What remains to be pointed out perhaps is the extent to which this whole performance is precisely that, a performance. A self conscious acting out of roles and identities, the coherence and stability of which are often troubled by the fact that �we do not take on items of conduct (roles) one at a time but rather a whole harness load of them�(we) learn to be a horse even while being pulled like a wagon.� It is precisely this dilemma � being expected to behave like a wagon when one feels like a horse – that perhaps partly characterises the nature of the difficulties that both myself and the people who kindly agreed to be photographed by me experienced in County Donegal.

Generally speaking, in the relationship that obtains between the professional photographer and his subject, the photographer is held to possess a significantly greater amount of �visual knowledge� than the subject � thus rendering the subject relatively �inferior�. This means that the role that the photographer�s subject �embraces� requires the subject to accept that the wishes of the photographer � who is held to be the active partner in the relationship � are paramount. In this way the subject is rendered not only intellectually inferior but also passively embodied. He or she is expected � and, ideally, expects � to do what he or she is told. However, the subjects active embrace of the passive position is, as Rose Byrne�s absent smile, Rosalyn Murray�s refusal to let me photograph her one more time, and Danny Gillespie�s attention to horticultural detail suggest, rarely straightforward.

Erving Goffman draws our attention to what he suggests are two characteristic positions of role play; the �sincere� and the �cynical�. For Goffman the �sincere� actor is able to sustain belief in the veracity or truth of his own role �policeman, photographer, photographer�s model etc. – precisely because he does not experience any contradiction between an understanding that he has of himself � his �place� in the world – prior to his assuming a particular role, and an understanding of himself such as it is constituted through the performance of the role itself. For Goffman�s �cynical� or uncertain actor, however, the role of �photographer�s model�, for instance, may well not be refused as such – for whatever reason � curiosity, vanity etc � but the type of performance that the role demands is adapted by the actor precisely in order to overcome the tension that exists between the subject�s a priori understanding of himself and that mode of self understanding that should be realized if the actor were to reproduce the role of �photographer�s model� in as faithful and obedient a fashion as Goffman�s �sincere� actor� might. In other words, for some, being expected to play the role �straight�, as it were, is simply too existentially demanding to bear.

So perhaps the ways in which some of the participants in Bungalow Blitz subtly engaged in small acts of resistance � acts designed to overcome or suppress any existential contradictions between an apriori self and a self constituted through the act of acting out – tell us less about their perceptions of me as a photographer and more about the ways in which they carefully negotiated their own evolving identities, such as these identities were partially constituted through the highly ritualized performance of photography. Having said that it is surely worth noting that in spite of their partial �insincerity� what was certainly apparent to me was the extent to which they, as relative �inferiors�, attempted to put me, their �superior�, at ease. Something which was largely done by �simulating the kind of world the superior is thought to take for granted� (Goffman, 1997:96). In other words mimicking the type of behaviour that would indicate to me not only an acceptance of their own role as �ideal model� but a recognition of my role as �ideal photographer�. Apart from anything else this �duplicitousness� was a sign perhaps not only of their own abilities as actors but also of the pivotal role that the �hospitality ritual� itself plays in the social life of some contemporary rural Irish communities.

Bibliography

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© Paul Antick 2004