Title page and contents of the issue.

 Er(r)go...

… a boundless proliferation of images, a gargantuan escalation of photographic narratives, overproduction, excessiveness and inflation of visuality, contamination by portalosis, gaze as the imperative. Images obscure reality; it’s about time we opened our eyes.

How much truth is there to photography? Are the things we see true, since acontextual, non-situational and uninterpreted truth does not exist? How many truths then? The charming demon of interpretation lends a helping hand here: truth is constituted in and through interpretation, we cannot suspend our interpretative activity, nor can we elevate ourselves above interpretation without interpreting. That way or another, we’d better avoid the fear, dismay and anger of the audience. Someone says: the opposite of truth is falsity; hmm, who would have thought? How about trustworthiness instead of truth? We shall see.

In the meantime, intriguing things are happening. Ophelia is holding a bottle of wine in one hand and a glass in another, and has nothing to hide – in the end, she learns how to swim and is swimming in an inflatable pool; the element of water merges with the element of femininity, why not? Faltejsek returns to the pre-
natal stage, impersonates Ophelia and floats on water, and Faukner is searching for connections. Church bells delineate a comfort zone, simpletons do not know Latin but edify themselves and reinforce their faith, and the church establishes the relationship between man and world. Man conquers the world and re-enacts the act of creation while the corrupt society, like Narcissus, admires its own image engraved in metal (it’s Baudelaire). The photographer dominates, reigns and interferes with space – he is a functionary of the apparatus, no longer an innocent object in itself – now the apparatus of power: it disciplines and parcels out the body; the world freezes with the click of the shutter, and the subject turns into eidolon. Luckily, a photograph, like tjurunga, resists absolute death and bears witness to life; it summons the past, exorcising it in the process, but it may also viralize throughout the internet and disgrace the heroes. A feminised masculine body proudly flaunts its penis whose erection, strangely enough, attracts the viewers’ attention. Suicidal heroines are placed in the midst of children’s toys, but medieval death does not go along with the new world-view. In-between the entangled orders of identity and difference the linear time of progress defeats the cyclical time, diachrony encodes itself into synchrony, synchrony into diachrony, and Burroughs keeps it short: it is the word that conceives the image, and the image is a virus. Finally, the artist, in a liminal condition, gets off the merry-go-round of life.

But things don’t always look that bright. Photography touches upon the open wounds of memory: cattle wagons, railroad tracks, barbed wire, a chimney, human hair, a striped camp uniform, a suitcase, air – still permeated with ash particles of human remains – enriches fields and meadows and mingles with construction materials, Muranów built from crushed-brick concrete made of remains of people and buildings, a splinter of human bone. Women (c)rushed together, it’s their last sensation of intimacy before leaving for (non)existence, women from Mizoch – Eurydices, appearing and disappearing, suspended between life and death by Orpheus’s gaze. Vivante/morte. And elsewhere, the nuclear holocaust of Chernobyl, landslides of reality, puffs of smoke, contaminated plants, self-portraits of caesium, plutonium and uranium, pesticide burial sites, faces contorted by dread, and screaming – the banality of horror; death as radionuclides permeates the fabric of photography, but tourist traffic increases in the Exclusion Zone. We need to restore feeling to the nerveless structures of memory.

And around and in-between, as per usual, various valuables of intellect and materiality: numinous cameras, ekphrases and inphrases, preposterior stories, non-phallic, non-Oedipal, but always negotiable difference-in-proximity, camera obscura, aesthetics of minimalistic metonymies, men in corsets, cultural palimpsests, self-fragilisation, genological disruption, shreds of knowledge, fascinum vs. fascinance, elements of sadomasochistic culture, classism, demythologisation of infantilising stigmatisation of folk artists (!), death locked up as a spectre in the crypt of unconsciousness, beginnings of photography in Rzeszów and Subcarpathian spacetimes (and what about the charm of Polesie?), iconic intelligence, a look which touches and feels, disembodied monuments, dispersion, shapelessness, intermingling of orders, and – naturally – indeterminacy, disappearance, suspension. Oh, and out of nowhere, there shows up a hint of common sense.

Let us resume: visibility structures everything, invisibility condemns to absence and pushes everything into non-existence. But, as it often happens, the problem turns out to be more complex and complicated than it seems, even though the proponents of culturalism will be ok with that.

With no pictures to show, the journey never happened.

Wojciech Kalaga
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4874-9734

The issue of “authenticity” of photography has been habitually related to its technical specificity and capabilities. In general, it was concerned about the automatism and inquisitiveness (precision) of the act of preservation, incomparable to the dispositions of traditional image media. It was supposed that those capabilities determine the “real depiction” and photography’s typical “ability to confirm the authenticity.” It was the rule of analogy, and the relation between a photographic image and the depicted reality that established this criterion of authenticity, much as in the discourses of the truth. This assumption has been called into question in this text, inspired by culturalism and pan-interpretationism. It is insofar as we relate not to the world as such, but rather to the way in which the world exists for us in the realm of certain cultural, social and discursive contexts. In consequence, the issues of the truth and the authenticity of photography are specified in and through interpretation, always within the predetermined discursive strategies and cultural justi­fications of the interpretive communities. The truth and the photography’s authenticity are then dependent inevitably on the context, and subject to discursive conditioning. Furthermore, the actors of interpretation act upon the current convictions of the interpretive communities, which those actors share and perceive as their own.

The article’s point of departure is the assumption that at a general, somewhat metaphorical level, it is possible to present the relationship between man and the world through the analysis and interpretation of bodily practices, resulting from the material character of intermediaries, cultural tools mediating human cognition of the world and re-establishing the relationship between man and this world. If the material character of the mediator is significant, the question can also be asked as to the extent to which the design and shape of the mediator will influence the shape of this relationship. The aim of the text is to put forward a thesis on the influence of the shape of photographic cameras on the development of subjective thinking in the 19th century and then on the contemporary re-establishment of the community. The context and basis for this interpretation will be the medieval symbolism of churches, treated here as numinotic cameras.

The article concerns the problem of the relation between the function of family photos in the culture of Subcarpathian, rural communities, and the ways of organizing time there. The author reconstructs the history of bottom-up photographic practices and shows their relations with the processes of modernization. He describes how economic and social changes were associated with fluctuations in the form and functions of vernacular pictures. He is also interested in contemporary ways of using old photographs. The article proves that initiatives such as local digital archives are important forms of preserving the local identity and popularizing tradition. Nevertheless, the basic aim of the article is to define the place of vernacular photography in the process of creating contemporary constructions of the past and present. Based on ethnographic field research conducted in one of the communities near Rzeszów, the author proves that photos can become a link between two types of the past and tradition – experienced as a pattern and interpreted as a text. As such, they are a form of dynamic mediators that cope with long-lasting and radical cultural change.

The article describes examples of inphrases whose purpose is to arouse emotions evoked through the reading of a literary text and to recreate those emotions in an artwork, in this case, in the works of three Czech photographers. The starting point for the analysis of the three selected photographs is, first and foremost, the character of Ophelia from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and the description of her tragic death. This description is subsequently set against a painting titled Ophelia, created by a Pre-Raphaelite artist, John Everett Millais. Further analysis focuses on the photographs by Martin Faltejsek (the Weightless series), Jan Faukner (the Nemesis series), and Barbora Bálková (the Literary Suicides series). The analysis of the photographs which represent Ophelia concerns, among others, their symbolism (femininity, water, nature archetypes), and highlights the similarities and differences between the three media, i.e. literature, painting, and photography. Apart from covering the issues of visual experience, the article addresses the question of whether the particular photographs escape the Shakespearian context and fit within the fine-art context, as well as whether the artists propose their own, new reading of the myth of Ophelia.

The text aims to draw a link between the concretization of the memory of the Holocaust and the affective effect of photography and experimental artistic techniques employing photography. The main argument is that focusing on the materiality of experiencing the physical traces of Shoah, as well as the structure and tangibility of the artistic gesture and materials used in the artistic process, can activate the affective potential of a “feeling witness” or “wit(h)ness” in both the artist and the spectator. To do that, it is necessary to transform the objectifying gaze into a look that touches and feels. The article analyses examples of artistic / photographic works that seek to mobilise this kind of look by reaching for the concrete tactility of ashes – both as a figure, as artistic material and as physical presence that can leave its imprint on the photographic film: Elżbieta Janicka’s series Miejsca nieparzyste / The Odd Places, and a photograph from Wojciech Wilczyk’s series Powiększenia / Blow-ups. Theorising the possibility of making an analogy between the process of working through the traumatic event in an act of artistic creativity and incorporating the ashes into a non-phallic order of signification, the text also refers to Bracha L. Ettinger’s notion of Transcriptum both in her theoretical elaboration of the term and her art.

ERRATA:
Page 90, footnote 27
As is: Izabela Szymańska, “Sylwia Chutnik o duchach Muranowa”, Gazeta Wyborcza, 10 maja 2012, cytat za: Joanna Krakowska, “Cmentarz”, Ślady Holokaustu w imaginarium kultury polskiej, red. Justyna Kowalska-Leder, Paweł Dobrosielski, Iwona Kurz i Małgorzata Szpakowska, 113.
Should be: Izabela Szymańska, “Sylwia Chutnik o duchach Muranowa”, Gazeta Wyborcza, 10 maja 2012, cytat za: Joanna Krakowska, “Cmentarz”, w: Ślady Holokaustu w imaginarium kultury polskiej, red. Justyna Kowalska-Leder, Paweł Dobrosielski, Iwona Kurz i Małgorzata Szpakowska, 113.
Page 90, footnote 29
As is: Por. Justyna Janicka-Leder, “Wstęp”, w: Ślady Holocaustu…, 21.
Should be: Por. Kowalska-Leder, “Wstęp”, w: Ślady Holocaustu…, 21.

Bracha L. Ettinger’s artistic series, Eurydice, is grounded upon a historical photograph from the liquidation of the Mizoch ghetto on 14 October 1942, depicting naked women and children waiting to be executed. The artist treats this picture as a basis of her artworks and covers it with layers of paint. It is, however, difficult to identify this art as archival. By means of her artistic procedures, Ettinger endeavours to free her paintings from the bounds of representation; what she does is – as I claim – (anti-)archival work. This article aims at studying the relation between Ettinger’s oeuvre and the photographic archive. First, I try to point out the insufficiency of the archive and to identify Ettingerian attempts to work it through. Second, I discuss the notion of the gaze in the matrixial psychoanalysis. Just as the look of Orpheus sends Eurydice back to the Underworld, the spectator’s gaze may kill the women from Mizoch again; this is the impasse Ettinger strives to break.

The article deals with visual and narrative ways of representing the Chernobyl disaster. Two cultural texts have been analyzed: the photo album entitled Chernobyl. Confessions of a Reporter by Igor Kostin, and the comic book Chernobyl. The Zone, by Natasha Bustos and Francesco Sanchez. They are connected not only by subject matter but also by a combination of visual and language codes. The analysis in question leads to the conclusion that for the articulation of the event and its consequences, one-code message is insufficient. Intermediality is a way to describe the traumatic post-catastrophic experience.

The paper explores the anthropological meanings of photography and its connections with other visual media representing the human being. Complementing a long tradition of anthropolo­gical conceptualizations of the mask, Hans Belting’s theory of photography – treating it as a new form of a death mask – allows one to identify additional senses and paradoxes of this particular art form. By adopting Belting’s perspective, the author seeks to demonstrate how this medium manifests itself as unique by allowing one to trace historical transformations in our approach to the human body and its finitude. Also, by simultaneously defying death and acknowledging it, photography surfaces as an exceptional testimony to the twentieth-century drive to conceal death as well as to the universal desire to preserve life. Thus, Belting’s concept of photography may be argued to offer a point of departure for an analysis of photography as a life simulation strategy.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the problem of truth and credibility in the context of communication with photographic images in the public space. The ubiquity of the new media allows for the claim that all aspects of internet communication should be treated as a public message. According to the author of the article, the issue of truth in the epistemological sense (when it comes to the rules of perception), and truth and credibility in the ethical sense (when it comes to the attitude and assessment of photography), constitute an important element of reflection on contemporary visual communication. The article is written from a philosophical perspective, the author prefers the hermeneutic method. In the analytical part, the author refers primarily to philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer and the visual culture theorist William J. T. Michell.

In the following paper, the author approaches some of the visual work of two contemporary photographers – Erwin Olaf and Ruven Afanador – in an attempt to see how their work renounces traditional views on masculinity. The photographs chosen for this analysis appear to be a peculiar play with social conventions and expectations related to gender and sexuality. In their work, both Erwin Olaf and Ruven Afanador seem to disrupt and reject the economy of heterosexual desire in favour of a much freer – and unconstrained by propriety – expression of corporeality and sensuality. As a result of such a spectacle of re-creation, the body is redefined not only as a means of expressing performativity (or, the surface onto which it is inscribed), but above all as a medium of becoming which functions as a reservoir of ever-changing meanings.

William Burroughs perceived the method of collage as a way towards a rebellion – an insurrection against the system of control inherent in language itself. In this article, a vision of language as a parasitic life-form presented by Burroughs in books such as The Ticket That Exploded and Nova Express is examined. The method of collage (or, as Burroughs calls it, the cut-up) is analyzed as an opportunity to tear down the oppressive structures of meaning self-reproducing themselves through our adherence to sociolinguistic rules. The very notion of struggling with parasites of meaning is connected with Roland Barthes’s conceptualization of myths as layers of meaning that envelop and parasitize signs in order to further their own agendas. I endeavor to reformulate Barthes’s dyadic model of myths into a triadic one (following Peircean semiotics), which I then relate to Jeffrey Elman’s text on language as a dynamic system, which allows for an in-depth perception of the way in which the parasite of language is described by Burroughs.

The article concerns the book entitled Niebinarne i wielowarstwowe pojęcie płci [Non-Binary and Multi-Layered Notion of Gender] by Renata Ziemińska. The monograph consists of three parts. In each, the author deconstructs categories underlying the existing conceptual structures of gender, stabilized within the binary sex system. The philosopher exposes the shortcomings of the binary division using the example of intersex and transgender people. She proposes the implementation of legal and institutional solutions that would increase the visibility of non-binary people in Western societies. Ziemińska postulates that gender should be analyzed as a multilayered process, conceived of as a variable continuum – dependent on various biological, cultural and environmental factors. Ziemińska proves that a change in thinking about gender is possible and that philosophy can significantly contribute to its implementation.

The proposed discussion of Richard Shusterman’s The Adventures of the Man in Gold focuses on the literary-generic features of the text and the new ways in which it deploys several established thematic motifs. The tale is read as constituting not only a conte philosophique, but also a photo essay reviving the tradition of the paragone – the ancient rivalry of the image and the word – as well as the fairy tale, the quest-romance, and the fantastic story exploring the theme of the doppelgänger. This last motif is viewed in the context of, among other things, Shusterman’s essay on Wilde and Eliot, where he considers the contrastive ways in which they fashioned their public images. Shusterman’s book, containing autobiographical elements, is also discussed in terms of the relationships emerging among the implied author, the narrator, and the protagonist, with the emphasis put on the irony in the text which, rather teasingly, both asserts and denies the identity of the three personalities. And yet, even if Shusterman expertly uses irony to allow these three personae to retain their distinctiveness, the Man in Gold – a literary ingénu – can be viewed as the opposite of the figure of the Rortian ironist.

The present text discusses the theoretical foundations and methodological significance of Ewa Szczęsna’s 2018 Polish-language monograph Digital Semiopoetics in light of the rise of a wide variety of digital discourses that gave birth to a radical transformation of our semiosphere. Successfully translating the literary-theoretical reflection upon signification processes onto the digital plane, Szczęsna offers her reader an invaluable theoretical toolbox, applicable to literature, art, and other forms of semiotic interaction that were “born digital.” Proposing new solutions, however, the Author remains in a constant dialog with the mentors responsible for our legacy of semiotic reflection, thereby building a bridge between the “traditional” and “digital” forms of creativity and modes of interaction.

The present reflections address a text which resists any attempts at unambivalent catego­rization in terms of its genre. John Mattenson’s most recent book offers its reader not only a fascinating intellectual experience but also an intimate inside journey. In A Worse Place Than Hell the biographies of five main protagonists – Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., John Pelham, Walt Whitman, Arthur B. Fuller, Louisa May Alcott – are the canvas, upon which the Author paints the biography of an adolescent country at the brink of a collapse. It is a (hi)story of the rite of passage from partisan egotism to civic responsibility, a social development that made America’s maturity pos­sible. After Fredericksburg, the ultimate catastrophe was averted owing to the ethical integrity of individuals whose faith would redeem the initiative that America had stood for – and still stands – since 1776. Matteson’s book may still help inspire yet another ethical awakening in the nation fragmented more severely than ever since the end of the Civil War.

Paweł Jędrzejko's critical note on Mark Helfrich's photobook Naked Pictures of My Ex-Girlfriends. Romance in the 70s. (Los Angeles: Rat Press, 2000). 

Paweł Jędrzejko's critical note on Jakub Dziewit's photobook This is not another Martin Parr exhibition (Katowice: grupakulturalna.pl, 2018).

Polish abstracts of the research articles of the issue.

Info for the Contributors to Er(r)go and the journal's stylesheet.

The colophon of the issue.