THE ROLE OF THE STUDIO WITHIN PHOTOGRAPHY: A ROOM AWAITING A

NARRATIVE

BY ELLIE MCCARTHY
A LEVEL PHOTOGRAPHY: PERSONAL STUDY

Having determined a personal attachment to installation, I aim to examine the inevitable

tension hovering between fiction and reality when working in the arguably highly contrived
genre of visual language. I am focusing my investigation into the process of this creation.
This starts in the studio. The oxford dictionary defines the studio as:

1. The workroom or atelier of an artist, as a painter or sculptor.

2. A room or place for instruction or experimentation in one of the performing arts.

When contemplating the studio itself, I depict a blank environment, connoting to an empty
vessel expecting to be filled, within which every artists will respond differently. How does
each artist leave traces and inhabitants behind? I envision the lighting equipment posed and
ready to perform, presenting an opportunity to create a new photograph, or recreate a pre-
existing scenario in the photographic medium. A deserted studio resembles a neglected room,
where pieces are installed, just to be advertised and then seized and locked away only to be
kept in a photograph.

A studio environment allows the photographer to adjust the lighting, framing and the visual
state of what the viewer is looking at, having complete control. I am keen to explore how far
photographers can deliver fact and fiction, and the impact this inevitably brings upon the
viewers perception of truth: does truth need to be unedited and un-manipulated to have
resonance or can a fictional set-up bring attention to the notion that we need to be aware of an
artists deception at all times?

Through scrutinizing fabricated set-up arrangements, which derive from documentation of

reality, artists such as Tracey Emin, with the use of 'My Bed,' created in 1988; Tara Sellios'
Retribution; (2011) and Noemie Goudal's 'Warren;' (2011) create still-life set ups that
connote more truth about human presence and existence than fiction. Based upon an
appreciation of these keys works, I will investigate photographys ability to transfix the
continuation of time; using a domestic environment as my starting point: a focus which is
often over-looked and disregarded when using the medium of photography and still life.
These suggest a static narrative: focusing on one frozen moment in a photograph. The above
artists, although not all photographers have been able to incorporate fluidity a sense of
before and after, so effectively within their work that the audience is to some extent
blindsided by their trickery and clever installation of the objects within their scenarios. The
viewer is sucked in to the narrative of the scenes being presented to them: what happened in
the moments before the sheets were ruffled or the dinner party fell into disrepute; what
happened after the camera left the scene? These questions take priority so fervently that the
idea to call bluff on the artist and their theatrical set-ups does not arise.

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 Tracey Emin
My Bed
1998
Site-specific Art

My own response

Above is Tracey Emins notorious and controversial Turner prize winning My Bed along
with my own response to her work. I am keen to explore the idea that My Bed corresponds
to a piece of furniture, or a jigsaw. While Emin is the original creator, the piece itself has
been set up in several locations in different countries. She raises questions concerning fiction,
reality, story telling and staging. It suggests how still life is an artifact, transitioning from
something intrinsically personal and representational of the artist herself into a remake of the
original: a version of her domestic environment. Emin states; I think now people see the bed
as a very different thing. With history and time, the bed now looks incredibly sweet and
theres this enchantment to it. I think people will see it differently as they see me
differently. This suggests how personal her work is, by her art work changing, she is
changing too, despite the original piece being created so long ago. Once a still life
incorporates elements of the personal from the artists themselves, it will always be attached
to that personality or character. As that artists is real, does it mean the still-life has more
credibility? Does injecting personal traits within a still-life set-up mean the artwork can be
trusted?

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One of the principal genres (subject types) of Western art essentially, the subject matter of
a still life painting or sculpture is anything that does not move or is dead. Still life can be a
celebration of material pleasures such as food and wine, or often a warning of the
ephemerality of these pleasures and of the brevity of human life (Tate Modern)

Furthermore, Sellios explores her own deceptive and manipulative intentions purely within
the studio environment: a location, which perhaps allows for a far greater depth to the
duplicity. She also more aggressively highlights the themes of transience: of the
impermeability of life and death: something which is nodded to in Emins temporal aspects.

Tara Sellios
Impulses
2012

My own response

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Tara Sellios work explicitly focuses on life and death; 'emphasis placed on ideas of fragility,
impermanence and carnality.' She states how death has always had an importance in the
history of art. Through these images, I aspire to make apparent the restlessness of a life that
is knowingly so temporary and vulnerable.' (Sellios, T)

Her series 'impulses' is based on the themes of love and death. 'Keeping in dialogue with art
history, this body of work draws inspiration from Rodins large scale sculpture The Gates of
Hell, which is a visual interpretation of Dantes Inferno. This sculpture portrays figures that
are intertwined in various emotional and physical states in the presence of Hell.' (Sellios, T.)

'These photographs illustrate the tension of coupling and the insatiable, desperate nature of
desire in a life that is knowingly so temporary and vulnerable. Love can be seen as a potential
comfort or distraction from death in a world where everything is under the influence of
passion.' (Sellios, T.)

Still life installations provide Sellios with a medium through which she can trick the viewer.
She does so by transforming the blank spaced studio into a cluttered scene, alluding to decay
and disgust. Placing the rotten meat in distasteful ways allows the viewer to observe how the
photographers intensions are to create disturbance, what is present and what is absent, and
beauty and precision. She also ensures her framing is straight on, meaning she doesn't miss
out any details she has obsessively curated to be perfectly disturbing. Like Letinsky (another
artist who creates still lifes with a nod to temporality), her installation portrays a studio
environment manipulated and controlled by the photograph. We as the audience are not being
invited into the space itself. Unlike Emin, Sellios is not installing this dramatic scene in the
middle of a sterile white room. We cannot peruse around the whole scene, taking in every
angle, every tactile surface, and every smell. We are constrained to the frame of the
photograph. Our experience of what went on in her studio is limited to what the
photographer wants us to see. Photographers can distort the studio to great lengths, possibly
without limitation, however it is when choosing to render this narrative onto the flat 2D
surface of a photograph that a heightened distortion occurs. Similar to clever photojournalism
in which the media will only show its readers what it wants them to see, Sellios has edited
out the situational awareness that lies outside her camera frame. This is what separates Emin
and Sellios: the artists invitation into their fiction.

In my own work I am questioning as to which tactic I find more appealing. If my desire is to

trick my viewer, would it not be better to combine elements of both? Present both inside and
outside the frame? How will this disrupt the notion of time a fundamental turning point to
creating a successful narrative: a story which has a beginning, a middle and an end. Without
any of these, the tale is incomplete and the audience is left considering the work as abstract
instead of a narration.

The notion of a temporary, domestic environment arises from Robert Rauschenberg,

specifically in his piece Bed, one of his first combines, binding found objects together,
usually with objects such as tires or old furniture, on a traditional canvas support. In his
piece, Bed, he used a well-worn pillow, sheet, and quilt laden with pencil scribbles and
seemingly random and chaotic splashes of paint in a style similar to that of Abstract

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 Expressionist drip painter Jackson Pollock.

Some believe that these are Rauschenberg's own pillow

and blanket, which he used while struggling to buy a new
canvas and once again I am reminded of Emins piece
and the inclusion of herself within her still-life. Hung on
the wall like a traditional painted piece, his bed, still
made, becomes a sort of intimate self-portrait consistent
with Rauschenberg's assertion that 'painting relates to
both art and life... I try to get a gap between the two.' In
some ways, this relates to Tracey Emin's 'My Bed,' as
Rauschenberg's loses its function, but not its associations
with sleep, dreams, and illness - the most intimate
moments in life. Some critics have projected onto the
fluid-drenched fabric connotations of violence and
morbidity. (MOMA 2004)

This piece portrays a domestic environment pined up on

the wall, with traces and elements of history, as
something has happened that the audience can relate to
straight away, an object we naturally intrinsically put a
notion of time onto, passing time. It appears frozen in
time due to the fact the paint has made it stiff and holds
together so well, but also abandoned from the frozen
fluidity, alluding to a sculptural creation. This creates the idea of 'movement taken into still
life.' Arguably, this artist does not necessarily work in the way I am critiquing for this essay.
He is not presenting a room, but he is transfixing a domestic object of intimacy and
suspending it on the wall like a family photograph. It is the gentle balance between stiff and
convulsion the fabric creates that I am interested in. Once again, this work is making me
think about the before and after, and the genuine origins of the fabric were the sheets his?
Does this even matter?

The fact the bed is cased and encrusted highlights its transformation from an unmade bed, to
a piece of art. The dried up paint holds it in place, stopping it coming apart or being changed,
as if time itself is frozen in the glass. It also portrays the piece to be very restricted, which
isn't like Emin's, as with hers you can add things and make any changes, however, Roberts is
stuck in that frame and wont' be changed at all: a stubbornness reminiscent of Sellioss
commitment to her camera frame.

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 Robert Rauschenberg
Glacier (Hoarfrost)
1974
Solvent transfer on fabric
with pillow
120 x 74 inches
(304.8 x 188 cm)

My own response

On a more transient note, Rauschenbergs series Hoarfrosts includes a piece called

Glacier, pined up onto the wall, appearing fragile and unsecured. Again, it is a large piece
of fabric with what seems to be writing along it, with a smaller piece of fabric behind it. We
are denied the details of the layers behind the first, however we are teased with this sense of

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depth, again for me this evokes a reflection on time, history and a journey.

This highlights the idea of 'hiding and revealing that relates to aspects of my own project: I
have been questioning this notion of narrative and how it is best rendered inside the walls of a
room, a studio, as opposed to documentary style photography capturing stories as they play
out in front of the lens. In my own response to Rauschenberg, whilst combining the ideas
stated above I created layered sheets of my own, transferring black and white remnants of
spaces I have visited. The rooms and locations I have been in are now gathered on the flat 2d
surface of the fabric, however the nature of this presentation means that I have been able to
create a layered and chaotic transparency to my own work similar to Rauschenbergs.
Reviewing the presentation of this work meant I established it best to pin the work in a
bulging manner, alluding to a sculptural quality. This has me questioning as to whether all
work created in the confines of a studio, despite being transferred into photographic
documentation could be considered sculpture.

Photography into Sculpture embraces concerns beyond those of the traditional print, or what
may be termed flat work, and in so doing seeks to engender a heightened realization that art
in photography has to do with interpretation and craftsmanship rather than mere record
making. (The Photographic Object exhibition, 2014)

With this in mind, I am now reviewing the work of studio-based sculptural photographic
outcomes. Sculptures are realized within these rooms, yet these rooms are integral to the
work. They are sculptures themselves. They are created, curated, manufactured, birthed. They
are not chance happenings caught within our cameras. They are heavily contrived yet
arguably more poignant and resonant. They are installations which have the power to
transform the room used to present into installations.

'The heart of installation art is immersion. Installations rely on the gestalt - the entirety of the
vision - to create a greater response in a viewer than a more conventional exhibition. Perhaps
more importantly, they aim for transformation by immersion; the viewer becomes not simply
audience, but participant in the art. As one enters or engages with an installation, one is
transported to a fictional space that bends time, distorts reality, and reimagines the parameters
of artistic creation.' (Thompson, R)

My own installation
- a recreation of my
grandmothers room
within a built studio

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Installations demand a kind of dialogue between audience and work, simply because the
audience becomes part of the art experience. There is an intimacy to this encounter, which in
turn, creates a more holistic and personal connection between viewer and artwork. When
viewing a photograph contained within a frame mounted onto a wall (Sellios), there is always
going to be a degree of separation. The viewer is not necessarily part of the work. When
installation photography is successful, the audience member becomes a more active
participant of the work, creating his or her own event and experience. This brings more truth
to the notions around human existence that the work may be trying to connote, as the
audience is engaging with their own actual existence.

Michael de Courcy
Untitled
Silkscreened boxes
1970-71

My own response

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Like a four-dimensional collage of frozen moments, Michael de Courcys Silkscreen Boxes
(1970-71) creates a rendition of time and space with modern almost cubist-like quality. The
corners of the boxes infer the edges and various facades of the locations the photographs
visual dictate. Presenting his photographic documentation of these personal and prominent
locations like this is the perfect combination of the issues I have attempted to unpick in this
project: installation arts superiority in creating an immersive experience within us through
our ability to view it as a living and breathing 3d outcome (therefore intensifying its
narrative, yet it is crippled by its undeniable link to art and therefore will perhaps always
be considered to lack reliability. On the other side of the coin there is a 2d photographic
document of the manifestations of the studio: perhaps intrinsically more trustworthy due to
photographys title as truthful medium, but it is a limited presentation and perhaps one we
take for granted now.

As I was working in my studio I realized that the stacks of boxes sitting on the other side of
the room in a disorganized fashion seemed more interesting to me than the formal shapes I
was trying to make with them. It was at that point that I decided to ask the custodians of the
museum to put them together as if they worked in a warehouse. In fact I left it up to the
custodians at each one of the venues. That is key, in my mind, to how they became art in a
different way. (Courcy, M. 1970)

de Courcys towers of one hundred printed boxes are stacked arrangements which obstruct a
view of all but the outermost sides, allowing de Courcy to expand and obscure his narrative.
Their cube shapes are chambers, and this makes me think of the original camera: the camera
obscura. Its literal translation is a darkened room. Photographs are created through the
process of light rays penetrating a light-tight and contained chamber, producing an inversion
of the outside world in the internal structure.

These boxes are inverted obscuras. They are in the internal workings of photography
wallpaper onto the external structure used to create them. Is this not the perfect description of
the rooms, the studios, these photographers have been creating to tell their stories?

With this in mind, my final outcome is designed to reflect all elements of the process of
creation within a studio environment. I considered revealing to my viewers only the end
product the plastered boxes displaying the angles and edges of my fictional reality on the
other side of my wall. However, this essay has enabled me to avoid underestimating the
power of audience immersion. Photographic installation is successful due to its ability to
include the people who view the work. They take part in it.

Therefore, the room: this box or location waiting to be filled is a fundamental tool to artists
and photographers alike. It is not just a vessel to create something in only to be removed and
detached from the outcome in the end. It is not just an arena to stage a show, capture your
still life and reposition the documentation of this theatre on the wall in a picture frame. It is
the photograph itself. It is the story. If used to display in, it used as an actual medium, it is the
artwork and it has the power to infer the photographic event, therefore enhancing the
narrative being devised by the artist.

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Durden, M, 2014. Photography Today. 5th ed. England: Phaiden Press.

Emin, T, 2002. The Art of Tracey Emin. 8th ed. England: Thames and Hudson.

E. McTighe, M, 2012. Framed Spaces: Photography and Memory in Contemporary

Installation Art. 5th ed. England: Dartmouth.

Thompson, R, 2016. INSTALLATION PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE TRANSFORMATION

OF THE VIEWER. Don't Take Pictures, [Online]. 3, 1. Available
at: http://www.donttakepictures.com/dtp-blog/2016/3/1/installation-photography-and-the-
transformation-of-the-viewer [Accessed 13 December 2016].

Schoenholz Bee, H, 2004. (ed) MoMA Highlights: 350 Works from The Museum of Modern
Art, New York. 10th ed. New York: Museum of Modern Art.

Sjholm, J, 2013. The role of the art studio in contemporary artistic production. CiND, 1,
34.

http://www.michaeldecourcy.com/four-mapping-projects/_SILK-SCREENED-BOX-
UNTITLED/index.htm

https://hyperallergic.com/138490/stretching-the-truth-of-photography/

http://tarasellios.com/impulses/

http://www.rauschenbergfoundation.org/art/artwork/glacier-hoarfrost

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/studio

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/s/still-life

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