The Brief Investigation into the Fascination of the Carpark
Within Contemporary Photography
Content
Introduction: Entering the carparkPage 3
Chapter One: Finding a parking spacePage 6
Chapter Two: The Pay and Display machinePage 10
Chapter Three: Walking back to the carPage 13
Conclusion: You are waling out of the carparkPage 19
End notesPage 21
BibliographyPage 22
Introduction; Entering the carpark
“Nobody ever discovered ugliness through photographs. But many, through photographs have discovered beauty. Expect for those situations in which the camera is used to document, or to mark social rites, what moves people to take photographs is finding something beautiful. (The name under which Fox Talbot patented the photograph in 1841 was the Calotype: from kalos, beautiful.) Nobody exclaims, “ Isn’t that ugly! I must take a photograph of it.” Even if someone did say that, all it would mean is: “ I find that ugly thing . . . beautiful.” “ Susan Sontag, On Photography, (1977).
I start this investigation with the opening paragraph of the heroism of vision form; Susan Sontag’s, ‘On Photography’. “ Nobody has ever discovered ugliness through photography’s” Sontag remarks, but I would like to ask ‘ has anyone found boredom through an image? Sontag goes on to say, “Photographs have discovered beauty.” And yes, people obviously find photographs interesting. But what makes people to take pictures of something beautiful, but do people also get moved in the same in the same way to take pictures of the mundane?
Sontag also says; “ Isn’t that ugly! I must take a photograph it.” Nor does any one say, “ Isn’t that boring thing . . . interesting?” Even if someone did say that, they just found it interesting from the start and just don’t know why?
The most mundane and boring thing that comes to mind is the humble carpark. This is also ‘space’ that interests me as well, for some reason that I do not full understand yet.
“Beautiful, boring and just plane bad’ proclaims the BBC’s, The Late Show, (1/6/1993) to these functional, flattish space of tarmac that people park their vehicles in. But as I’m even thinking about writing on this subject and the BBC even commissioned a piece about these areas of land, they can’t be that boring. In other words, they must be interesting?
I have encountered that within contemporary culture, especially in lens based mediums, the carpark has been seen through many eyes and interpreted the same. As the motor car has only really taken off within the last century with the invention of the Model T Ford so it would plane that the invention of these purely functional spaces have only been made from the 1930’s onwards?
Then there is the matter of when photographers came interested? The most famous account is Ed Ruscha’s artist book, Thirty-four Parking Lots in Los Angeles in 1978, then many accounts through the 80’s,and 90’s. Has this been a truly contemporary subject and maybe, an avant-garde subject? A subject that “normal” people would not normally even think about, only a wasteland with a Pay and Display, a space to park your car in the morning, a place you take for granted. So the idea could be called absurd, taking a photograph of a carpark, but it is well practiced to take images of the surrounding environment.
So. Is this a subject just for the modern day artist? Are these places really photogenic for
only the minority and an overlooking practical piece of civil architecture by the majority
of the population? Or are these places a space that everyone can relate too?
Chapter one: Finding a parking space
There are numerous photographers that I relate to in the following genre and have been clear influences in my own work, exploring thought documentation their surroundings for one reason all another. Landscape photography. This is not a new idea of photographing the area in which you live in. This as the first objectives of photography when first bought into the public domain in the late Victorian Era: Felice A. Beato and Louis-Jacques Daguerre are just two names that come to mind that when thinking about this period. But this through time has been manipulated, from a barely untouched farmland to the rise of suburbia. So from a population sparsely at the start of last century to the a concentrated population fining it hard to find a home of there own. Turning a landscape into a set of portraits. So when these portraits are removed, they create a surreal look at or surroundings. It will be look at a few examples of different landscapes, we can we see why they are photographed. I shall pick the following examples; Interiors, seascapes and ‘seascapes’. As documentary landscape photography is such a large subject to start with, but the examples above have very fine similarities to the main bases this ‘long essay’.
The way in which these photographs are taken are usually composed are usually very simple. The use of a straight/ over-simplified shots, maybe at a very subtle angle used, gives the viewer perspective of the space. Also space to study and not patronize the image as a ‘petty picture’. All these empty spaces, like the whole world has been deserted, all that remains are the buildings and ‘presentable’ area’s of land in what ever is the ‘popular fashion’ of the moment. In some strange way, this idea of ‘normal’ creates some very surreal results. Just like looking through an old personal photo album. Some one in the room will say “I can’t believe we had that wall paper in the living room…and just look at that carpet…” so on and so on. This is us documentary photograph at it’s best. We are producing such work that not even Man Ray’s surreal eye could not even thought up the concept for.
Although not related to our personal space, this idea that normality and ‘popular’ fashion can be seen to be surreal is shown in Lynne Cohen’s works. Her work shows the interiors of a range of different places, ranging from beauty salons to military installations. “These are spaces to which, in the normal course of events, we pay little attention, unless the building or it’s furniture are the are the work of an outstanding architect or designer. But by isolating these areas and representing them in photographs…and in so doing makes that terrain unfamiliar, even alien.” Cohen herself does not consider her self a documentary photographer, but does say, “ …of course my photographs document places I go to.” But she goes on to say “…but they all documents of what I am thinking about, resonances between what is in the world and what is in my head.” (Cohen, 2001). It seems that photography always finds a way to document everything, even through the images that are suppose to be very artificial.
The point is photography is turning back on the traditional form of pictorial photography, turning itself into a fine art; a documentary fine art. This idea of making documentary landscape easy on the eye is gone; when we should be showing the grittiness of reality and translating it’s imagery. Photography as a medium has grown up. And by doing this has found out what it is made for.
This has more depth and longer lasting consequences this idea of creating an image that could easily be seen a boring is hardly new. This very modernist view of photography has been used within commercial architectural photography in one way or another. This is simply just to make a record of the building for the architect or/and the client, so all the details can be seen in full and the potential could be of the building can be seen with in the glossy ten by eight pieces of photographic paper. Although these images are produced as a matter of documentary and no theory is being transfused within the silver based paper. The idea behind producing boring and useless photographs is actually not boring. By going through the theory thought process of trying to make fucking boring photography, they become incredibly interesting. This is also the case with producing ultra meaning fewer images. It seems so uber-mundane and a waste of time to a ‘normal person’, so why take the photographer? This is the reason for taking the image. To get the viewer to ask the simplest of questions and then start questioning everything around them; why have they taken it? Is it art? Does it have any meaning/theory/ideas behind these images? The answer is, yes! The image in this style of photography is usually just a repercussion of the through process. Actions speak louder that words, so images can more easily impressed and interpreted. Words that have to be read over a long period of time, but pictures can be viewed in a second in a second.
So can a boring image turn into an interesting image, just overtime. The Chinese have a philosophy that about this; boredom turns into interest. I shall call this borism to simplify it with in this text. The idea that a boring image is more interesting in the long term, than an image that is taken for an instant interest (e.g. fashion photography).
Chapter two: The pay and display machine.
I don’t know if the seascape is a true genre, but a select few photographers have made a name from taking images of them. Hiroshi Sugimoto is an example of this (although his seascapes are only a small theme in is entire body of work). These bland, empty spaces heavily remind me of something; the carpark. This empty space that are void of life on the surface that just seems to stench for infinity, just like the space in front of West Edmonton mall . As I’ve started off with saying, Suigmoto is the most prolific of these photographers and his seascapes are well renowned. In his series ‘Seascapes’, in which Sugimoto has been working on since 1980, the camera positioned so that the horizon splits the frame into two equal sections: Sea and sky. One thing about these images is they are far from boring. Although minimalist, they are full of detail. The sea creates patterns on the surface, while the sky is cloudless and a complete contrast to the water below. Although the weather conditions change the horizon is always perfectly in the centre of the image. This keeps the series of images together to create an air of mystery about them. Telling us that there is something more to these images, a meaning or a message. In Sugimoto’s case: The idea of time. This is a common theme that runs through all his work. He say’s “ In the seascapes series I deal with the first man on earth in a perlingual state, aware of himself or herself facing the ocean, and understanding for the first time the separation between the self and the outside world.” (Sugimoto 2000)
This leads on to another sub-genre in photography that is closely linked: Snowscapes. They are the basic consistency of the sea, but in a different form. Abbas Kiarostami, Jules Spinatsh and Tina Ltkanen (to name only three) all have worked with snowscapes recently. These also reminded me, gives me the idea of close links to the carpark as a landscape. In the way are both used economically and leisure. First off, half of the time the snow (e.g. ski runs) is not being used, just like any carpark in the middle of the night. Empty of cars, the carpark has only form and no function. This is also the rule when it comes to most ski resorts. Midnight and the function is gone. There is no capitalist gain from running a ski run at anti-social hours. The space is fenced off and a mode of payment is introduced at the entrance. This applies to both the ski run and carpark. A car parking ticket and lift pass. The only difference is that ski resort collects their capital from leisure and carparks from necessity. The leisure that comes from carparks is a non-commercial one. As people pay to ski and snowboard at a ski resort, the opposite happens in the carpark. People ride and skateboard in this space for free. Space does not exist until it is explored. As one creates space by running, leaping, dancing, riding through it and one should really not pay for that privilege. This is also one of the main objectives of photography, to explore our own surrounding, as BMXers, skateboarders and other forms of urban sports find their own answers to the landscapes they live in by using their imagination.
“The boys realized the secret thrill of hung out of a lapped-over frontside grind at the bricks, hitting sweeper, smacking the tail and listening tit’s echo back into the vast, dark parking garage into the night.” Davis, (May 1983) Slopes, p.8.
Although carparks pay their way by people paying to park their cars within the tarmac area, unlike ski resorts (although I have heard that these winter resorts also contain carparks as well), they are both areas of land that can be used for both used for leisure and commercial means. This is can also be said about the sea. Although not pacifically designed for these purposes. A space does not really exist until explored in one way or another. And the only real reason area is explored is to see how it can be used.
Chapter three: walking back to the car.
So we come to the matter at hand, this idea of the carpark within contempary photography. Not many photographers devote then selves to this subject, although some have done, but they have popped up more and more often. I could list names but I think a few examples would be more effective. Andreas Gursky, Paul Graham and Igor Mischiyev are what come to mind, but the latter of these names are more engrossed in this relative subject. These artists have found inspiration in the carpark through digitally manipulation, reproducing them in miniature or for documentary purposes. These blank canvases all used to express what the photographer wants to show in them. Real or not, just like children making snow angels on a winter holiday. The reason for producing these images differs from photographer to photographer. An example of this ‘blank canvas’ is Igor Mischiyev. His project, Multi Story Car Park (2002), is drawn from the artist’s photographic documentation of the parking garage interiors from 1998 to 2001. These photographs serve as the source material, which is edited in a variety of ways. First, the images are digitized and cleared up. Not only imperfections on the film, but also in the landscape are eliminated. All the grim and rubbish that appears in the original scene, as well as signs and direction markers in the garage are carefully erased from the images. Further, the artist has smoothed out architectonically irregular elements in the building and removes support structures where he sees fit. In this way, Mischiyev restores an architectonic lightness of the structure that was not in the present before. In some cases, he had added to the space. They have been embellished with details from domestic interiors and present’s them as inhabitable. Wallpaper and wooden floors suggests a re-appropriation of the space. Suggesting it is used for other reasons than automobile storage, “… Mischiyev examines supposedly arbitrary spaces.” Marc Glode mentions and goes on to say about Mischiyev’s images, “ … Addresses precisely this aspect of failure within functionality of the parking garage.” (Mischiyev 2002).
This is a common view within contemporary European photography; the idea of exploring newly invented architecture. Or is the carpark just a means to end. Within Simon Hut’s work he relies more in the technical process to make his images work. He wishes the viewer to see his work as a journey, through the different layers of negatives that produce these images. This creates three stages of the journey, in the three different negatives that produce these images. This creates three different types of journeys within one image. The photographer who creates the image, then audience in the image travels through the land, sea and sky. Then the carpark, is privy to this message and not really the main focus in the end result, “…unify the purpose of all three which is: the costal carpark …”(Hutt 2005). This is also the case in Paul Grahams book, ‘American Night’ (2004), as the parking lot is used more as a social statement as well as a point of journey. In amongst the perfect looking house in American suburbs with the 4x4 in the drive, then the digitally manipulated, ‘fogged’, images of lonely black Americans walking away from the camera. The images are printed in such a way to suggest that he wants to hide something or just a glimpse. The contrasts between these two types of images are straitening. The different between the fully maintained, furnished house and rugged, lifeless parking lots gives us ideas of standards of living within society. So the carpark is just being used as an instrument.
But photography is not the only medium that looked into this over simples’ example of architecture; film has also made very good use of these spaces. But unlike photography, the film world has always seen the purpose and possibility of the carpark as a landscape to be visually interacted within and can be seen in such films as Repoman (1984) and Fargo (1995) that are just couple of examples in which the carpark takes host to a scene that changes the plot of the movie. Without this scene in the film, the plot will be missing an important, even life changing scene. These useless, empty spaces at night or parking spaces for busy, covenant for shoppers/workers during the day are sub-consciously engraved into our idea of a normal social environment. These makes them great places in which to create surreal/extraordinary or even mundane happenings which will create more of an impact on the audience or create a scene in which people can easily relate to, so in turn fall deeper into the movie. This also can work the other way around, as an event that happens in reality could have just been taken out of a film; murder, police beatings and flying radioactive cars. The most obvious account is the film Fight Club (1999). One of the main scenes starts with the characters walking out of a bar and (Brad Pitt) offers (Edward Norton) a place to stay the night, as his house and all his possessions were destroyed in a fire, and in exchange he wants him to hit him. It turns out that this scene ends up in a carpark or parking lot, depending on what side of the Atlantic you are from. But if you ponder on where this event could happen, it seems obvious that it would happen here. Another place, the police would have come and broken it up. The isolation of this fenced off area only leads to isolation and seclusion. A couple of screens on they are on their way to destroying the whole of the financial Western world, then in the end succeeding. Although this is an extreme example and this does not happen out side the movies. The carpark, this ordinary piece of architecture that is used, viewed, experienced everyday, by everyone. This is one true place that ever everyone can identify and relate to strongly. This is very important in producing contemporary images. This idea is even strongly by the use of carparks within advertising. Budweiser, Cravendale and 02 have all used a carpark in their advertising campaigns or a shot location in the last couple of years. The main example of this is the Citroen car advert, containing a break dancing on top of a multi-story carpark. The media (like always) follows I contemporary trend, especially something as easily assessable as photography. This is because most adverts are based around a photographic image of some type. The idea of setting something in an ordinary make us relate to the situation, again we relate to it. So we buy it. We feel it should be part of our life, like the advert is telling us need it in our life.
But the advertising world does nothing avant-guard, it only plagiarises from the art world. So overtime, years, these images/ideas filter into mainstream culture. So when was the carpark a true avant-guard subject?
It has been looked in by ascertain Art movements, but for mostly the Situationist International (S.I.) with a map psychogeographic map called ‘The progress of the sickness: Core-garage’. This self-indulged project was to find a solution for Paris and her automobile problems. As parking in this old city came apparent for the first time during the 1950’s - 1960 as the installation of expressways on the both banks of the Seine, the construction of Paris perched orbital motorway. In 1968 Piere Courperie, Paris historian, cheerlessly assessed the impact of traffic on the city; “in 1968 there were more than 1,700,000 cars for 330,000 parking spaces.” (Sadler 1998). The S.I. understood that Traffic, especially the car, was fundamental in a modern society, as people must travel. This lead to ‘The Situationist Theses on Traffic’ (1959) written by Guy Debord. That states that the city planners do not consider private transport as an essential means of travel. Point three translates as: “we must replace travel as an adjunct to as a pleasure.” (www.bopsecrets.org). So if travel can been seen in this way, can all forms and magnifications of transportation. The carpark, the resting place devised for travel, can be viewed in the same work. But as our essay subject is a muse for many an artist, life is truly stranger than fiction and events can unravel that are more elaborate than any film plot:
“On March 5, 1984, Gerard Lebovici – one of France’s biggest film producers at the time, and head of Champ Libre, a publishing house which printed revolutionary tracts and literary classics - received a curious phone call … Early in the morning of March 7, he was found dead behind the steering wheel of his Renault in a underground parking lot, four bullets in the back of his head.’ Robert Greene, 2001
So in a way we have fallen full circle or is it just irony? That the benefactor of a left wing avant-garde art moment (also close friend), which had bought a viewing room for these individuals, had such fatal consequences. Angering the film industry, alienating him self from all his friends that where not part of the S.I., that causing his assassination. A plot line that no one could of thought up, apart for life it self. More radical than the film Fight Club could ever be and more spies and conspiracies than an American cold war thriller could ever think up. This plot contains more left wing terrorist, which can be mentioned, which in turn fuelled the same amount of government security agencies to safe guard a conservative nation. And then in turn Guy Debord burning all his film in protest and living in exile in southern France. Art-life, life-art?
Conclusion: You are now walking out of the carpark
So if a Carpark/parking lot is so boring, why are there numerous photographers, documentaries looking at this subject? I’ll tell you why, because they might be boring, but they are a long-term part of our society. A major part of our architectural infrastructure that we all relay on, day in-day out, so we can all relate to these spaces. Because we do use them everyday of lives as a matter of post-modern life style and we cannot escape it. This is why artists like Ed Ruscha have investigated this elementary form of architecture and well known writes write about them.
“Ruscha’s images are mementos of the human race taken back with them by visitors from another planet.’ J.G. Ballard, 1981
Boring maybe, but soon turns into fascination. Which also writers/poets like John Betjeman to J.G. Ballard have a common interest. Underestimating the BBC’s idea of these tarmac open spaces. These images that are now historical records of how we once used the combustion engine to move from A to B. Documentation in a sense, all in the name of art. But as an avant-guard subject? Well, it may have been, but the S.I. and others acting on the same settlements, have made a path through all the canons and barricades of bourgeois thoughts of pretty things. So the future, including us, could enter this subject of carparks. Making us think about our everyday environments and the people that use it as fuel. So I will end on this poem, although was written in the mid-twentieth-century, follows my settlements of contemporary photography.
‘For, to achieve his lightest wish, he must
become the whole of boredom, subject to
Vulgar complaints like love, among the just’
‘The Novelist’ W. H. Auden
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Next Level #7
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American Beauty (2000) Directed by Sam Mendes
Clerks (1994) Directed by Kevin Smith
Dogma (1999) Directed by Kevin Smith
Fargo (1995) Directed by Oliver Stone
Repoman (1984) Directed by Alex Cox
Fight Club (1999) Directed by David Fincher