was able to squeeze J. in here this time
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Lying Beyond the Surface and Other Essential Truths
Until recently, I viewed photography and images in general, as benign art forms, at least in passing. Upon seeing a photograph, I was attracted to the flashiness of the image, or how it related to something previously experienced or felt. Like Roland Barthes, author of Camera Lucida, I saw the "referent, or desired object, the beloved body" (Barthes 7). However, I never stopped to question myself about why the photograph or images in question moved me. The knowledge aspect associated with discerning the possible origins of meaning beyond the obvious was unfamiliar. Any ideas of what the "creator" was trying to convey were glossed over unless they existed in the framework of periphery. I could say, "That photographer sure can work an angle!", yet never anything like, "Why on earth would the photographer include a tilted head looking away from the camera, situated in front of all those people in the background?", like Barthes shows in Klein’s Mayday, Moscow photograph (29). However, Barthes also alludes to the photograph drifting between sign and image yet assuming neither due to its "invisibility" (6-7). Of course, the photography, including, the "operator", subject, and observer, is not necessarily unseen in a redundant way, but in a fashion that, once captured, suggests a void or a created space. Perhaps this vacuum was what I felt upon casually looking over various photos in times past without knowing exactly why it is I was ambivalent, or that any sort of wrongdoing occured at all.

Barthes states, "Photography cannot signify except by assuming a mask" (34). A strong likelihood exists in that a photograph must refer to the unseen in order to drape meaning over the obvious. Barthes often describes this latency as punctum, whereas the general, intended, or obvious meanings and guided interpretations are referred to as studium. Even with prevalence, the studium is not appreciated or worked out in its full scope without some sort of contrast, obliqueness, or plain distraction. The punctum itself does not always function as a mask, nor does the mask always act as punctum. When they are mask and punctum, as with the soldier smoking in the Nicaragua photo on page 22 of Barthes’ text, we can momentarily draw our eyes away from the studium contrast of the nuns and the soldiers together in the war zone. The immediacy of the contrast is overwhelming, almost to the point of deflection. If viewing the goldbricking soldier within his own imagined space and concerns, we add to our initial perception and even dart back and forth with the punctum and studium, guessing, probing, and assimilating until the point of failure or disinterest has been reached.

More directly, Andrei Codrescu, writer of the book The Muse is Always Half-Dressed in New Orleans, states "…the world could be multi-imaged and color-explosive" (Codrescu 5). Contrastingly, Codrescu draws on the problem of tunnel vision mentioned earlier, yet caused by political influences. Codrescu’s family was inundated with images of Joseph Stalin and other aspects of the Communist Regime. He jokes that the immersion was so complete, "… a schoolchild, when asked what two plus two equaled, the child would say, ‘Stalin’, or if someone obtained a picture of a departed relative and were asked what they saw, the answer would be ‘Stalin’" (6). Of course, he suggests an utter and pervasive loss of objectivity as a byproduct of oppression. This sense of loss is often expressed as alienation, or disconnection with normalcy. At what point do we, as people, find that our yearning for satisfaction is met and exceeded to the point of causing a backlash effect of harm? Codrescu gives an example in equating tourism and terrorism. He states that after we "pacify natives through the force of arms, we finish the job with cameras" (10). Here, we, as oppressors, lose our sense of camaraderie for our fellow human being. We objectify him or her through novelty, completely disregarding our mutuality of existence, deepening the chasm of loss far enough so that we do not even realize our own selves being swallowed alive, side by side with those who we kill in so many ways.

Luckily, photography is a medium, something that works as a result of the user’s wiles. Artistry, as defined by Alexander Pope, is a way of interpreting and expressing nature. Codrescu states photography is an art that "…frees the eye from tyranny", at least for the sake of good intentions (14). The eye, or controlling mind, is freed from any responsibility with the advent of photography. Therefore if something is captured on film, it must be true, or harmless. We can go back to the oblivious views of this art form, excluding especially the human condition captured by conditions exacted by humanity. These losses of innocence are silent approval for our excesses and blatant ignorance for the limitations that nature itself does contain in its essence. We must be alert for the cunning falsehoods so attached to any laurels we obtain during the pursuit of personal happiness. Codrescu describes a group, punk rockers, as "resenting mightily the wavy impressionist hippies with all their shimmering lights and idealized distortions" (17). Punks take the semiology of the hippies, of how signs or images represent the mass of all that could be associated with the spectrum in question, and dash its "head" upon a stone, hoping to achieve the same essence sought after in complexity by the hippies, but in their own fashion, by piecemeal. Like Codrescu, I find the punks are very black and white, preferring the freedom of choice, like their counterculture brethren, yet preferring pragmatism over impression. If something is tangible, it can be reckoned with, understood and used.

Kitsch, a concept embodied by substance and matter, is very pragmatic. The punks drew as an unofficial platform the problem of authenticity. Umberto Eco, author of Travels in Hyperreality, discusses authenticity as recognizable only to the educated (Eco 8-10). Codrescu shows the oppressed also know when they are fooled with imitation (Codrescu 14). The punks, usually very intelligent and alienated as a result of being force fed a dominant proto-culture of excess and inequality sought to create an environment more fitting to their own social vision. One way they did this was by wearing lots of makeup, wearing unserviceable cheap clothes in certain ways or patterns and fashionably styling their hair in ways, like the clothing and makeup, that mocked current fashions or recalled traditions of times past that those in power would find deplorable. Through this communal understanding and shared sense of identity crisis, or loss, kitsch came to be useful. In other words, mass reproduction of elements belonging to the new subculture allowed people with no future to stake their claim in the world as relevant human beings defined only by their own versions of what was right and acceptable in their experience.

At the same time, the images now displayed are commonplace. The bold adventurers who drove their stake through the heart of all that was corrupt were now attractive to the masses. Naturally, the uniqueness once enjoyed began to vanish. The mainstream populace, infatuated with new trends and fads, began latching on to the newest accoutrements made attractive what was designed to mock them. The old 17-18th century problems of affectation surface, as the new “caretakersâ€