How can the theory of allegory help us understand a photograph? Analyse the work of contemporary German photographers, using theoretical

concepts developed on the module.

by Irina I. Csapo

This paper proposes to bring forth a discussion about the returning of allegory in painting,

which connected with historical context, has undoubtedly spread to the realms of photography as

well. This is most particular in the case of German photographers Thomas Demand, Andreas

Gursky, Gerhard Richter and Thomas Ruff. In the means of a photographic medium, their body of

work seems to favour a version of “history painting”, in which the implications of history are

figurative and representative. In this sense, the theory of allegory becomes a crucial tool to decipher

the artistic worlds of the before-mentioned photographers.

It is widely known the issue of photography with truth, for which the reality references

history, similarly as a fingerprint or death mask, in the manner of an indexical imprint. This is to be

considered as a starting point in the theory of allegory, where historical reality, largely debated in

the German photographers' work, is to be interpreted in an allegorical way (Matheson, 2007).

First of all, in order to recognize allegory and its manifestations in photography, it is

important to note that “allegory is an attitude as well as a technique, a perception as well as a

procedure” (Owens, 1992, p. 53). The word allegory is a combination between allos (other) and

agoreuein (to speak), that is 'to speak otherwise' rather than what it is literally said or as Owens

(1992) puts it, one meaning is deciphered with the help of another one. Granted, this leads further to

Owens arguing that allegory is a supplement because “an expression is externally added to another

expression” (Owens, 1992, p. 63). Furthermore, in a more polemical argumentation, allegory has

been a long time considered unsuitable (Day, 1999) and even the “antithesis of art” (Matheson,

2007, p. 52). Gail Day in this sense draws upon Owens' essay on the “Allegorical Impulse”,

bringing forward the dichotomy of allegory and symbol, in which the two are in great contrast with

each other. Allegory was considered superficial, mechanical and didactic as opposed to the symbol

which was venerated as fertile and transcendent. She suggests that allegory is an “unmediated

construction” (1999, p. 106) whereas the symbol has the character of immediacy. Moreover, the

nature of allegory is to be emphasized by this contrast, in which its goal is that of 're-presentation'

whereas the symbol's nature is to present. Despite that, however, Owens (1992) restores the concept

of allegory and subjugates it to a cause of postmodern art context. In addition to this, he suggests

that allegory has “the capacity to rescue from historical oblivion that which threatens to disappear”

(p. 52).

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In this sense, I would like to mention the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher, which given its

existential time frame of post-war European history, they represent a self-effacing tradition of the

historical reality deciphered within the context of postmodern photography through the use of

allegorical theory. The “Becher School” has had a great influence over the works of Demand, Ruff

and Gursky, which in a similar manner their photography inherits the use of allegory. The Bechers'

work composed of clinical and objective portraits of blast furnaces, water towers and gasometers

that features a great sense of trauma, in which the human and the body are completely cast out. This

comes as a contrasting depiction to the inter-war period, in which the body was celebrated and

idealised (e.g Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia, 1936). I believe, in this case, it is here that allegory

intervenes: the re-presentation of historical background in which the supplement, that which has

been added (“the clinical objectivity”) is in antithesis with historical reality. It does not reiterate

history, but rather enriches it through the example of trauma and contrasting “comparative

anatomy” of the industrial remains. Next, as a continuation to the Bechers' allegorical tradition, I

shall analyse the works of Thomas Demand, Thomas Ruff, Andreas Gursky and Gerhard Richter in

the light of the allegory theories mentioned above.

Bernd and Hilla Becher, Typology of Water Towers, 1972.

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The sculptor-turned photographer, Thomas Demand, is using the medium of sculpture to

create another, that of photography, shifting between one form of representation to another

(Marcoci, 2005). Similarly, as in Bechers' work, the absence of body remains as clinical and devoid

of any subjective representation. This is only natural, when one comes to realise that “Demand's

world is a paper world” (Adams, 2003, p. 20). All the objects in his photographs are carefully

crafted out of paper, an aspect that carries within them an unused quality, a special kind of purity

and lightness. Demand, however, presents the objects as they are or as near as they could possibly

be to themselves, which further suggests that he is challenging their indexicality, their imprint

within the photograph (Adams, 2003). This further is empowered by the idea that each image in

Demand's work is a cluster of allegorically and referentially charged structures of connected

images. Building life-size paper models out of photographs collected from the newspapers and

archives, Demand does not give the illusion of a promise. Even so, the paper objects do stand for

something that has otherwise disappeared. A question arises: what was that something that was

there? (Adams, 2003)

Thomas Demand, Badezimmer/Bathroom, 1997.

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Jacques-Louis David, Marat at his Last Breath, 1793.

Badezimmer (Beau Rivage)/Bathroom (1997) comes to answer the question of historical

reality and in this way, Demand makes a direct link with the historicity of his indexical objects.

Taken after a series of sensational newspaper photographs of a dead politician in the bathtub of a

Geneva hotel, Demand's photograph features the absence of the human presence, as an enigma. This

could very well be interpreted as a direct allegory on the theme of political corruption and murder

(Matheson, 2007). Moreover, the image is also allegorical to David's painting Death of Marat

(1793), where Marat is a traitor of the revolutionary ideology. The politician's dead body references

the one of Marat, which asserts a further allegory to that of 'the corpse' (Matheson, 2007) the

epitome of allegory, as William Benjamin reflects upon in “Trauerspiel”. All these references along

with Demand's particular technique suggest that the quality of allegory is inherent in his works.

Further on, the paper will bring forth the works of another contemporary German artist,

Thomas Ruff, which was greatly influenced by the 'Becher School', thus placing him in the tradition

of “realistic photography” (Lütticken, 2000 p. 29). While, in Demand's work, one notices the

traumatic absence of body, Ruff redeems it in his famous series Portraits and Other Portraits

(1986-1995). In this context, it becomes clear that Ruff's photographs are similar to those of the

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Bechers' clinical portraits of the industrial ruins. They share the same blankness of image and in

Ruff's particular case, these have a quality of “visual autism” (Matheson, 2007, p. 39). The body in

his photographs, however, is not bringing highly anticipated subjectivity and they remain mute and

impassive, without a reflexive feedback. His portraits are conceptualised even from an early stage to

be represented in large scale, as to assure exacerbation to the extent of hyper objectivity. Likewise,

it has been argued they reference the real world due to their great amount of details however, they

remain utterly artificial (Matheson, 2007). His works consist of photos with a strict and rigid

character, paying great attention to colour, detail and surface (Lütticken, 2000). The sitters in the

photographs are devoid of any facial expressions, thus making a direct leap to the allegory of

passport photos and because of their blatant frontality, they are even more reminiscent of mug shots.

Thomas Ruff, Porträts,1984-86.

Nonetheless, the impassive faces of his photographs have become icons of the 1990's,

referencing August Sander's symbolic portraits at the beginning of the 20th century. The subjects,

young German students and Ruff's friends perhaps suggest the escape of effacing experience and

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memory linked to trauma and post-war Germany, so obvious in the Bechers' work (Dexter, 2003).

At the beginning of the 20th century, industrial modernisation and the aesthetic of the

production line has excited great influence on the diverse areas of aesthetic and architectural

production. In the USSR, as well as in America, standardisation and the breaking of human labour

into strict time frames and codes for higher efficiency on the production line were becoming

increasingly popular. This evident influence can be seen in Andreas Gursky's works, where the

world is represented aesthetically within the production-line industry. Gurky's images reasserts the

idea that the world is still encoded and assembled in the capitalist symptomatic view frame (Dexter,

2003). That is to say that large corporations have long been the centre of attention in Gursky's

photography. Working as an advertising photographer for Osram and Thomson, in 1990 he was

proposed to participate in an art project that discussed “the relationship between humanity, the

environment and technology” (Hentschel, 2008, p. 27). This from then onwards opened many doors

for him and sparked his interest in photographing series of production lines in various factories. The

results are relaxed and unpretentious, raising allegory not within the people which foreground the

photographs, but rather in the well-structured mechanical processes, where the people are

supplements in a relentless technical setup (Hentschel, 2008). For this reason, Gursky is one of the

heirs of Bechers' legacy, as his photography provides indexical information on the realist history of

technology, in as much the furnaces, water towers and gasometers of the Bechers do.

Andreas Gursky, Siemens, Karlsruhe, 1991.

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Moreover, the problem of the body is yet further to be argued in Gursky's work. Drawing

from Ruff's portraits where the body is represented as too big, in Gursky's photographs however,

this is too small (Matheson, 2007). His blown-out landscapes present humans like ants. This creates

the effect of the gazer, and more specifically creates the illusion of a divine surveillance, where the

viewpoint is broadcast from a Panopticon conceptual storey, perhaps behind the heavy curtains of

corporations.

Andreas Gursky, Engadin, 1995.

Last but not least, the works of Gerhard Richter must be taken into consideration as they

have been extremely influential within the post-modern art criticism and shares a similar tradition

of the reality-history allegory in German art, even though the artist's starting point was that of

painting. Richter's art is perhaps best emphasized within the references of the Bechers, so as to say

that the medium of painting has had a long time traditional relationship with reality, as much as the

Bechers' medium's relationship with history was crucial (Green, 2000). Richter's awareness of his

medium's historical situation is best depicted in his Oktober 18 1977 series (1988). The project

addresses a historically specific public experience that focuses on the arrest of the Baader-Meinhof

group members and their shortly followed death on 18 October 1977. The fifteen paintings taken

after newspaper photographs that compose the work, depict moments from the life and death of four

members of the RAF, known as a terrorist group. The paintings address the questions of history

after modernism (Green 2000), for which Richter is iconic in Germany's art and its effacing

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relationship with its troubled past, especially the post-war period. Desa Philippi described his series

as troubling and heavy, for as it “seems to simultaneously announce and cancel a possible relation

between art and politics” (cited in Matheson, 2007, p. 40) an argument which betrays the political

implications at the level of the photographic work in discussion. Even so, Richter manages to

confront the viewers with the question of representing history within the use of painting after

photography, because by painting the photograph, Richter empties the image of its indexical

character.

Gerhard Richter, Tote/Dead, 1988, and source photo.

Simultaneously, Green (2000) has argued that painting after the photograph might seem as

“slavish mimicry”, but what reiterates Richter's ability to re-present historical context is his use of a

particular technique of painting which features blurriness, motion blur and the out of focus quality

of the paintings. In this sense, Green (2000) has declared that his paintings are “failed attempts to

represent the real” (p.44) which leads back to the idea of indexicality and its pronounced

imperfection. By this argument, it must be concluded that Richter's paintings incite a play between

perception and temporality, within which the allegorical concept resides.

All in all, the works of the photographers mentioned above use allegory as an inherent quality

within their own constructedness. Also, by the way of allegorical referencing, historical issues are

being reflected upon and tackled with within contemporary questions of privileged moments in

cultural memory (Matheson, 2007).

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Bibliography

Marcoci, Roxana, (2005). Paper Moon, in Thomas Demand (exh. cat.), MOMA New York.

Matheson, Neil, (2007). Ruff, Gursky, Demand: Allegories of the Real and the Return of History, in Brind, McKenzie, Sutton (eds), The Return of the Real, I.B. Tauris.

Owens, Craig, (1992). The Allegorical Impulse in Owens, Beyond Recognition: Representation, Power, Culture, Berkeley: University of California, 1992.

Lütticken, Sven, ‘Thomas Ruff: The Art of Anachronism’. Camera Austria, no. 70, 2000.

Day, Gail, (1999). Allegory: Between Deconstruction and Dialectics. Oxford Art Journal, Vol. 22, No. 1, p. 103-118.

Adams, Parveen, (2003). Demand Without Desire: The Work of Thomas Demand. Portfolio, December, No. 38, p. 15-21.

Hentschel, Martin, (2008). Andreas Gursky. Works 80-08. Germany: Hatje Cantz.

Dexter, Emma. et al., (2003). Cruel and Tender. London: Tate Publishing.

Green, David, (2000). History, Painting Reassessed: the representation of history in contemporary art. New York: Manchester University Press.

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