The Uncanny in PhotographyYi-Ting Wang

National Chiao-Tung University, Taiwan

Diane Arbus (1923-1971)

Diane Arbus’ works are uncanny for it’s not only because of her shooting objects with extraordinary appears, diseases or occupations. For me, there is an ambiguous feeling beyond words in Diane Arbus’ works. It’s close, it seems to invite viewers to look into her woks in a short distance, however, it’s also alienated as well, it makes people unable to stay close, even can’t help but avoiding their sight.

one photo observed by different viewers in different time with different ways will end up with different judgments; even when I look at the same picture next time, the feeling of the uncanny in mind will be different.

“If one wants to come closer to the essence of the uncanny, it is better not to ask what it is, but rather to investigate how the affective excitement of the uncanny arises in psychological terms, how the psychical conditions must be constituted so that the “uncanny” sensation emerges.”

– On the Psychology of the Uncanny (1906), Ernst Jentsch

Is photography uncanny ?

“If photography emerged as the material support for a new positivism, it was also experienced as an uncanny phenomenon.”

—”Phantom Images and Modern ManifestationsSpirit Photography”, Fugitive Images From Photography to Video（ 1995） , Tom Gunning.

there is no other form of art than photography that is more like a two-way-directed mono scope: in one hand it reflects the look of the outside world faithfully; in the other hand the image of the outside has the ability to look back through the inside both of the photographer and the viewer.

William Kentridge, Felix in Exile, 1994

Essentials of the uncanny‧A crisis of the proper: Comingling of “Heimlich” and “Unheimlich”‧The beginning of the uncanny is already haunted

Essentials of the uncanny‧A crisis of the proper: Comingling of “Heimlich” and “Unheimlich”‧The beginning of the uncanny is already haunted

“the uncanny is that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar.”

—”The Uncanny”, Sigmund Freud, 1919

Heimlich Unheimlich- Belonging to the house, not

strange, familiar, tame, intimate, friendly, etc. …

- Of animals: tame, companionable to man. …

- Intimate, friendly comfortable; the enjoyment of quiet content, etc., arousing a sense of agreeable restfulness and security as in one within the four walls of his house.

- eerie, weird, arousing gruesome fear

- Concealed, kept from sight, so that others do not get to know of or about it, withheld from others.

- the name for everything that ought to have remained…secret and hidden but has come to light.（ by Schelling）

Daniel Sander, ”Wörterbuch der Deutschen Sprache”, 1860

” Heimlich” and ”Unheimlich” are the opposite word for each other, in the same time, they both exist by the meaning of each other. In the one hand, ‘friendly and comfortable’ of ‘heimlich’ and ‘weird and gruesome’ of ‘Unheimlich’ are on the contrary; in the other hand, ‘concealed and safe’ of ‘heimlich’ and ‘about to exposed and revealed’ of ‘Unheimlich’ are similar and continuity.

presence of the uncanny

Essentials of the uncanny‧A crisis of the proper: Comingling of “Heimlich” and “Unheimlich”‧The beginning of the uncanny is already haunted

“The uncanny entails another thinking of beginning: the beginning is already haunted. The uncanny is ghostly. It is concerned with the strange, weird and mysterious, with a flickering sense (but not conviction) of something supernatural.”

—’The Uncanny: an Introduction’, The Uncanny , Nicholas Royle, 2003

“In fact it was doing nothing, even to the silk , but still I can feel it. Just like in tales, the man who witness the ghosts’ feast, he didn’t see them eat and drink, but he can sense that.”

—’The Ghost’, Walter Benjamin

it is haunted, and really uncanny, not because what they did, but for they didn’t do anything.

The Uncanny in Photography

Compared with other form of art which also take real world image resources as materials like cinema and video art, photography is a more silent way of art expression, it’s quiet, solitude and dark; it never makes a move, but it can scratch and make inner noise which can’t be heard, the noise continuingly resounds backward , and the uncanny emerges just like the blank with distance after the noise suddenly stopped.

William Kentridge, Felix in Exile, 1994

1. Alienation: photo as a mirror reflecting the appearance

A photo is the appearance of an appearance, a material outside of the object being taken. In other words, when we see a flat, 2-dimensional picture, we often mislead ourselves that object is in front of us. In fact, however, all the ways of seeing is at least with two kinds of distances（ object→appearance→photo）

Then when do we start to feel unnatural and uneasy? When our familiar circles of convenience is crossed.

（ object→appearance→mask→photo）

William Kentridge, Felix in Exile, 1994

2. Identity: through the photo, two parallel universe encounter with each other.

I had a dream before. In that dream, I was in an amphitheater. I was a performer on the stage. In the halfway of the show, the stage curtains suddenly split open. I looked into the crack on curtain, in back of my stage, there was a stage and an amphitheater which looked the same as I was, and there was girl who looked the same as me was performing on the stage. I could never forget that dream. For me, the uncanny in photography, just like this dream, reveals the existence of the double.

Diane Arbus, Identical Twins, Roselle, N.J. 1967

If we thought photos are uncanny, there might be a possible reason that photos are not just appearances, they looked with their own lives, even extended a inner or outer parallel universe which we never knew.

Diane Arbus, Woman With a Veil On Fifth Avenue, N.Y.C. 1968

Post-Mortem photography

William Kentridge, Felix in Exile, 1994

3. Connectedness: Photography is a passage like a two-way-directed mono scope, it calls out inner landscapes of photographer and viewer.

In the early period when photography was invented, people once thought it was an evil thing. Chiefs of Indian tribes in North America describe cameras as “a box full of shades of all people”. People tended to believe that cameras catch not only images but also human souls. Like people in 19th century also once believed that photography can call out to their dead families.

Ann Hamilton 1956-

Spirit Photography

“What’s thrilling to me about what’s called technique, but what moves me about it is that it comes from some mysterious deep place. I mean it can have something to do with the paper and the developer and all that stuff, but it comes mostly from some very deep choices somebody has made that take a long time and keep haunting them.”

-Diane Arbus

Francesca Woodman 1958-1981

” Atget is no more. His ghost, I was going to say ’negative’, must haunt the innumerable poetic places of the capital.”

--- French Poet Robert Desnos

The uncanny, both a kind of form and content; photography is both form and content as well. These two are treated as corresponding metaphors, including symbols and meanings, for each other. The paper concludes that exploring the uncanny in photography can inspire a new way of philosophical thinking among viewers, artists and critics that lies between psychological vision and aesthetic practice.

Thank you