Skulls at the Nyamata Memorial Site, Nyamata, Rwanda. Photographer: Fanny Schertzer

Morality is way too subjective and way too dependent on the unpredictable variables of year, country, religion, and gender to be black and white.  What is socially acceptable in one part of the world might be morally reprehensible in another.  While never easy to decipher, the moral question becomes especially murky with respect to the arts.

Over the years, photojournalist pictures such as Kevin Carter’s 1994 Pulitzer-Prize winning photograph of a vulture waiting to feed on a dying Sudanese child have elicited moral outcries that have likened Carter to a “second vulture” who, like the opportunistic vulture depicted in his photograph, takes the opportunity to shoot the picture instead of helping the dying child.  Yet the question here, as is the question with most photojournalists whose subject matter is unnerving, is this:  Is the photojournalist’s moral obligation to the individual or the collective?  In other words, had Carter gone to help the child (who, chances are, would have died) instead of taking the picture, would we, the general public, feel the depth and destruction of the famine in Sudan?  The question is perhaps moot for who can unequivocally say what is right and what is wrong when it comes to documenting disturbing realities (think 9/11 and Abu Ghraib).  Whether  it is related to his decision to take the photograph instead of helping the child, Carter committed suicide a few months following his Pulitzer.

What about familiarity?  Does “familiarity” with a difficult subject breed a certain indifference?  Fanny Shertzer’s photograph of skulls at the Nyamata Memorial Site, although disturbing, are less so than the Carter picture because the image of the skull is one that most of us are familiar with.  Whether it be through early 17th century Vanitas paintings, popular cultural references such as the video game Tomb Raider and the Indiana Jones movies, the infamous skulls of  Damien Hirst, or the array of plastic skulls that resurface every Halloween, most of us have had enough skull exposure to numb any potential indignation.

Vanitas - Still Life, Pieter Claesz, early 17thc.

The question – What is art’s moral obligation – is even murkier when it comes to the visual arts.  It depends, I suppose, on how we define art.  Does art have a social responsibility?  An aesthetic responsibility?  A political responsibility?  Is it the visual consciousness of a nation?  A visual commentary on its world?  The artistic whim of its creator?

Art’s moral obligation came up when I approached a well known photographer for an interview.  He accepted.  His altered photographs are a litany of gorgeous color amidst which sits a very young girl who stares back at the viewer with unnaturally large eyes.  While I liked some of the photographs  a great deal, there were some whose disturbing context (the girl, although always clothed, is portrayed as a sexual object) began to bother me.  It is one thing to intellectually understand that photographs such as these are intended to elicit discomfort and uncertainty.  In the case of this particular photographer, the photographs were a critical commentary on child abuse and the treatment of women as sexual possessions.  To the artist’s defense, he felt that were he to have used women as his subjects, his photographs would have considerably less impact given society’s over-exposure to women-portrayed-as-sexual-objects in advertising and the media.

Staring at his photographs (I chose not to publish his name or his pictures as it is not my intention to trash someone whose photographs  have artistic merit) I asked myself whether they were any more more disturbing than images from child beauty pageants.  The answer came down to this:  Notwithstanding the questionable psychological well-being of mothers who subject their young daughters to beauty pageants, there is the underlying (albeit disquieting) knowledge that this is a mother/daughter endeavor.

Two contestants for child beauty pageants (aged five and seven)

So who was the girl in the photographer’s pictures?  Where had he found her?  Was she a willing participant?  Where were her parents?  Making it clear that I needed to know the answers to these questions before we could proceed, I waited for his response.  None came.

In the end, what it comes down to is this.  While the obligation of art (if any) remains unclear, artists are not an entities unto themselves.  Much in the same way a dictator cannot subject his people to atrocities in the name of a peaceful reign, nor can an artist abuse her subject in the name of art.  Art may not have a moral obligation, but artists do have a moral obligation to their subject.

Nothing like a cool art fair in a cool city to bring the New Year in!  We thought Photo 50 (part of the special exhibition programmes) was awesome.  Selected by a “distinguished” panel, all 50 works being shown are for sale.

We liked these three artists:  Tereza was nominated by Anita Zabludowicz (collector and founder of 176 / Zabludowicz Collection, London); Flavia was nominated by the members of Goldsmith’s MFA Curating Programme; Hakim was nominated by Ekow Eshun (the artistc director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts).

CheckitOUT!

Tereza Busková's "The Fertile Couple", 2008 (Courtesy of the Artist)

Flavia Sollner's "The Night...2", 2008 (Courtesy of the Artist)

Tereza Busková's "Beheading of The Cockerel", 2009 (Courtesy of the Artist")

Abdul Hakim Onitolo's "The visual anthropology" (Courtesy of the Artist)

Abdul Hakim Onitolo's "The visual anthropology" (Courtesy of the Artist)

Images that stem from an honest exploration of a theme is what the photography of Montreal-based photographer Thomas Kneubühler is about.  During our talk, he made the distinction between a photographer and an artist who uses photography as their medium.  Photographers snap shots they find interesting.  Artists who use photography as their medium, think about issues that concern them, and then shoot the images that reflect their concerns.  What concerns Thomas is the isolation that technology has imposed upon an “urbanized” landscape. This situation is often unfriendly, uninviting, and non-conducive to a human connectedness.  This applies to his photos of  public spaces as much as it does to his private ones.  From the series Absence, 2001, to his Electric Mountains, 2009, alienation, and its complex relationship to technology, is the predominant, inter-connecting theme.

In Absence, we witness, up close, the faces of people as they stare at their screens.  Their gaze is as absent as the expression on their faces, their entire being absorbed by whatever is on the screen.  The theme of isolation is further explored in the series, Zones where we are confronted by the public space of airport and airplane and time zones that are never clear.   In both series, there is a feeling of limbo – individuals suspended between the here and the not here.

In the Office 2000 series and the Access Denied series, Thomas pushes the theme of alienation and technology to include the concepts of waste and private property. In his exploration of these issues, he uses not only his camera, but his own self.  To get the incredible aerial shots of the office buildings – which are private property – Thomas had to first ask for permission and then pay for the privilege of being escorted to the rooftop by a security guard.   Office 2000 intentionally echoes Microsoft’s Windows 2000, something that becomes evident in the way each lit and empty office is framed by a window (thus becoming a framed image) and how, together, these framed images recall pixels.

Thomas Kneubühler's Access Denied (Guard #1) (2007) | Courtesy of the Artist

Often, however, access to these private realms would be denied, either by a wired fence or a security guard.  In an ironic twist, the security guards in the Access Denied series are actually guards Thomas hired from various security firms (the real guards refused to be photographed).  Extending the irony, hiring the guards gave Thomas the control usually taken away from him – instead of a guard telling him what he could or could not do, it was Thomas telling the guard what to do or not.

There is no denying the ethereal beauty underlying the Office 2000 series.  Technology is seductive.  Ownership is seductive.  Even waste is seductive (think of the big car, the twenty pairs of shoes).  Who isn’t enticed by the power technology offers or by the possibility of ownership or by the ease of having all the lights turned on.   These are multi-layered themes that come together in the Electric Mountain series where we see the lit mountain without any skiers.

There is nothing new in Thomas’ exploration.   Technology and its love/hate relationship with the human spirit is one we have all experienced.  Art, however, is not about figuring out the latest trend before anyone else does or coming up with ideas no one has ever heard of.  Art is about presenting us with a new way of seeing.  If it is honest and well thought out, this new way of seeing will encourage us to re-think the issues that surround us.   It is the truth of this commonality that gives Thomas’ photography an immediate honesty.