They Were Love Lying

8/3/2019 They Were Love Lying

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Carlos Lobo | João Leal

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They were lovely, your eyes, but you didn't know where to look. (George

Seferis)

The eyes, which are called the window of the soul, are the main way through

which the centre of the senses or common sense can gaze more widely at the

endless and wonderful works of Nature; the ears are the second sense which is

exalted by listening to the account of the things that the eyes have seen.

(Leonardo da Vinci)

To see is like looking, the perfect natural combination of the five senses;

however, in seeing, this same harmony is one of reflected wisdom. Therefore,

to look first precedes seeing and then follows it whereas seeing first follows

looking and then immediately precedes it.(Almada Negreiros)

To Look, To See & The Image:

It is a question of looking, of knowing to look in order to see, to

perceive . The look will be, par excellence, this immanent “seeing”; it will

mean the Light, postulating Knowledge.

The question is knowing where to look. Because there is a necessary

diversity of ways of looking : “the look of the other” (Jean-Paul Sartre),

“the look of the traveller” (Sérgio Cardoso), “the look of the stroller”(Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin…), “the look of the wanderer”(Herman

Hesse), “the look of the stranger” (Nelson Brissac Peixoto), “the look

that leads nowhere” (Rainer Marie Rilke), “the errant look” (Bruce

Chatwin), “the look of the soul”, “the symbolic look”, “the mythical look”,

“the unseeing look”, “the reflected look”, “the look of the utopian”, “the

hermetic look” and even “the look of the serpent”… - safeguarding,

however, the difference in the epistemological order manifest in this

incomplete catalogue.

The completeness of so many “looks” contends for the gestation, thewidest known diversity of images: hypnagogic and hypnamorphic, hypnic

images, hallucinatory images, images by perceptive isolation, rhythmic

stimulation images, consecutive images, eidetic images … We should also

note: memory images, evocative images, imagined images, mental images

… (Michel Zéraffa).

Thus, it is possible to form, with clarity, some phantasmic aesthetic

portion versus right authorial deliberation:

Images of a scene from personal life; Conceptual images of an object; Images//historical event; Images//more general evocation (e.g. of a

concept), … amongst others susceptible of photographic andvideographic production. We should remember, without passing



judgment, the (in)conclusive distinction between the fixed and moving

image. The referential and/or elaborative functions also add to richness

and complexity with a view to the never-exhaustive theorisation on the

image and its typologies …operationalities and realisations.

True, neither the anatomic-physiological nor the purely psycho-

physiological look are sufficient, however convenient; to look is reason

and body. Both the visible and the invisible. The condition of being

visible, a right and a duty of Nature toward Man, requires man to exist;

the invisible, let us state like Merleau-Ponty, requires the condition of

becoming, not simply the invisible being the non-visible: "...what has beenor will be seen and is not, or is seen by someone other than me (but not by me),but where its absence counts in the world (it is "behind" the visible, imminent oreminent visibility, it is Urpraesentiert exactly like Nichturpräsentiertbar, likeanother dimension) where the gap that marks its place is a point of passage inthe "world". (Merleau-Ponty, Le Visible et l'invisible , Paris, Gallimard, 1964)

Conclusion:To see: to look at things >>> to see things;

To see: to look at others >>> to see others;

To see: to look at the world >>> to see in the world;

To see: to look at oneself >>> TO SEE oneself.

Landscape, Architecture & Objects:

There is a prime common denominator between the landscape,

architecture and objects – among so many others to be mentioned – that

is, precisely, intentionality. Intentionality is the inseparable theme; it is

the integral condition of the subject that decided to capture something(etwas ) for the photograph.

The intentionality underlying the photographic decision carries analogies

with the intentionality that guides any act of volition in favour of

production. The distinction will lie in what is designated as fragmentary

intentionality that possesses an aesthetic effectiveness. Even though we

always find, in other types of images, externalised through different

registers, a decision directed at the capture of a fragment of the visible,

in photography it reveals itself genuinely constitutive, substantial and

final.“These are fragments of impulsive or compulsive, or more simply pulsive,spontaneous, images, of a second or two, through which time precedes itself inthe invisible.” (Pascal Quignard, Sur le Jadis , Paris, Gallimard, 2002)The attention devoted to reality transforms both allusive representations

and tight presentifications, in fragments of a scrupulous or removed

documentation (always having the function of representing/presenting a

picture or creating detachment).

The decision about the affirmative fragment can derive from essential

and dissimilar residues.In a first moment, it derives from visual perception.



In a second moment, it reincarnates the mental ability to elaborate from

this same visual perception, approaching it, moving away from it,

protecting it, distorting it and finally …making use of it as a unity and a

whole.

In a third moment, the previous options are recognised as we discover

that they are mirrored in the procedures required for its realisation.

The sanctioned object, the fruit of the seen and the looked, reconciles

itself in the individual, converging towards knowledge, perhaps differing

in the moment when either action occurs in the individual/subject who

experiences it.

The photographic product implies therefore endless and interacting

elements, with particular relevance to some binomials assumed by the

subject/author directed at the subject/viewer (the public):

• Continuity versus discontinuity in the justified elements;

• Technical specialisation versus iconographic specificity;

• Presentification versus gnoseologic interpretation;

• Isolation versus convergence of visual signs and/or objects;

• Construction versus (aggregated) conceptual destruction;

• Technological accuracy versus creative intuition…

The author’s intentionality estimates the distinction, the almost unique

conditions that one wishes to expand. The factors governing the decision

on the identitarian fragment of the photographic image explain through

multiple strategies the desired iconographic and/or iconological

solutions: they promote tendencies, affinities and invoke referentiations

or contexts.

The distinctive, the differentiable, ensure a certain detachment from the

world even though they can never remove themselves from it for it is

unquestionable and constitutive. On the other hand, they guarantee its

availability for the decision to ignore, transfigure or recount it to be

made …“In this world, things are simultaneously available for use and according to theirmanifestation. (…) It is what does not show itself but gathers in itself, thestrength mustered before or beyond forms, but not as another obscure form: asthe other of forms.” (Jean-Luc Nancy, Au fond des images , Paris, Galilée, 2003)Thought intervenes in the destined image. It confers on it adjacent

charges, aesthetic properties and added values: realising, imagining

dominance; visible or unveiling resulting intimacies that have a common

conscience in the public that perceives them. This does not dissolve the

ability to justify objectiveness if that is the instance preferred.

Photographic images and other external images can be falsifications of

the eye. We grant them this right. Even though it should be noted that

seeing, looking, may be directed by passion, by emotion, these are

associated, become accomplices in a reflexive exercise that bestowsdensity and truth on them (as autonomous and discriminated images).



The deformation granted them by fragmentary (and ontic) intentionality

does not cancel the imagetic accuracy or clarity: this is another order,

the phenomenological order, because it is aesthetic, although we can

question identification, recognition or agreement with stricter cognitive

topics: “I do not understand what I saw. And I do not even know whether I saw itfor my eyes ended up by not being different from the seen thing.” (ClariceLispector, A Paixão segundo G.H., Lisboa, Relógio d’Água, 2000)

Landscape:

Landscape began by being defined since the remotest times of Art

historiography, dating back to Greece and Rome, and progressing from

then on with invalidations, interstices and dominances. It reigned or

abdicated, gliding on with the rules of taste or with ontological reasons,

and claimed reinvigorated appropriations as photography took it on.

Landscape is alive in the 21st Century.

If landscape is an interpretative art, when it is photographed is it doubly

so?

Landscape occupies a territory; it is localised and represents a portion of

reality that can be apprehended.

As territory, landscape is conventionally defined, referring to the

delimitation of a surface through natural or cultural contours that are

decision objects. The lines that govern these contours are baroque and

extend an almost paradoxical meaning because the fixing of limits

interacts with the open sinuosity of curvatures and bordering near-labyrinths.

Localisation is demonstrated by resorting to the definition of reference

axes; it is established by administrative procedures; it is fixed in plans

and maps that are filled in by partial images, taken from diverse angles

and perspectives, all complementary and necessary – Back to Zero.



The portion of reality in question results from two previous topics and is

decided by the intentionalised will of those who address and desire it. It

is the singular “place”, the endless sum of places that gain iconographic

identity and aesthetic autonomy. A supposed aesthetic of the place: as a

portion, as a fragment.

Fragments combine isolated components of reality meant for

discernment, becoming visual worlds touched by personal fabrication.

Apparently the opposite corresponds to the definition of “panorama”.

Panorama is a continuous narrative of the painted scene or landscape,

conforming to a flat or curved surface that unfolds or enfolds the viewer:“But your eyes proclaim/ That all is surface. Surface is what is there/And nothingcan exist except what is there.” (John Ashbery, Auto-retrato num espelho convexo e outros poemas , Lisboa, Relógio d’Água, 1995) It is a fluid surface, in the horizontality that the infinite perhaps earns

from us. It conforms to a linearity that oscillates between parallel lines

and/or lines that tend to converge to a virtual and distant vanishing point.

They can be ascending or descending, being transported to positive or

negative, hence bipolar, mythologies. However, they presuppose an

almost pictorial as much as geometric levelling – Endless.

Poetically, they would be bands of views nurtured by visual perception

that wants to bestow longevity and matter on them. They are filled in by

natural or environmental, visceral or constructed substances.

Architecture(s) & Objects:

The imaginary sets – Imaginary film sets - for some filmproductions stipulate directed gazes that want to see and focus on

specific factors, on structures designated by a deliberately captured

visuality.



Architecture always has an exterior and an interior, as the human body.

which is inside and outside, being one.

On the other hand, architectures have a history. They belong to

generations that perpetuate them thanks to their functionality and

inhabitability or dissolve them by damage and neglect. They are the

symbolic empty houses that are not necessarily homes… They are

embodied structures that can be filled in with unsuspected products and

materials.

Tarmac roads, urban layouts, lead to the seeds of architecture, they

legitimise them and make access to them possible. Roads are lines, all

things are lines as Álvaro de Campos knew that all things are symbols or

maybe nothing. Symbols can be neglected objects, can be intentional

debris or obstacles whose attributes deflagrate in social and ideological

connotations. These objectual traces are signs, allegories or metaphors

according to their use, to the pragmatics decided for them.

In these spaces where the architectural function is predominant, human

tracks almost dissolve, so imperceptible are they. It is almost as if theyhad not existed …

In Imaginary film sets photographic images appear in a post-conceptual

time/space (by reference to German photographic tradition), regenerating

aesthetical values and adding different semantic dimensions to them.

Similarly to what happens with the landscape, there are proximity and

detachment factors that organise differentiated visual perceptions (and

the others).

The architectural sets shown in the images are a construction of a

construction: a double or triple conceptualisation since their matricity

comes as a sequence of the line (the drawing as matrix) and returns to



the stipulation of lines, contours, chromatic fill-ins… substantive

morphologies bi-dimensionalised in the photographs.

Photography consists of, has this identitarian and essential note that is

recognised in drawing when this is assumed as a requirement and

postulation of the author’s body: “Where we see that drawing is a physicalprocess./ Because we only begin to understand it when we have practised it alot./(…)/ I discovered that drawing was not only to look at, but also to touch.”(Jan Fabre, Umbraculum , Paris, Actes du Sud, 2001)

Maybe “Images are words that failed us.” (Manoel de Barros, “Retrato Quase Apagado em que se Pode Ver Perfeitamente

Nada”)

Maria de Fátima Lambert

(Coordinator Teacher, Curator and Critic)

Documents

They Were Love Lying