Uncanny Unease: The Digital Eye at the Henry Art Gallery

The digital eye is an uncanny one, at least as it stands in the Henry Art Gallery’s exhibition The Digital Eye: Photographic Art in the Electronic Age. Although this is not true of every work of art included in the show, a substantial number of the images create the distinct sense of unease that defines uncanniness through not only the subject matter depicted, but more often through the overtly disjointed way the photographic imagery appears within the frame.

Simen Johan. Untitled #83 (from the And Nothing was to be Trusted series). 1999. Toned gelatin silver print. Collection of Marita Holdaway. © Simen Johan. Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York.

The doll-like baby captured in Simen Johan’s Untitled #83 (from the And Nothing was to be Trusted series), with a menacing expression and a devil-like crown of black hair, would be disturbing independently. However, the image takes on a hyperreal quality through its heightened contrast: the fire burns with a radiating intensity that makes its innocent role atop a birthday cake lost in exchange for the threat of imminent danger. Likewise, the toddler becomes a ravenous, cyborg-like figure that belongs squarely in the uncanny valley, its eyes more robotic than human, its face shrouded in shadows, staring into nothingness.

Sigmund Freud presented one of the earliest and most longstanding definitions of the uncanny: a frightening instance that bears a relationship to the familiar. Occurrences such as prosthetic and severed limbs, ghosts and the dead, cyborgs, robots, doppelgängers and automatons fall within this understanding of the uncanny valley.  The arm that is a part of the human form seems so normal when attached to a person, yet becomes something else entirely when detached. The Addams Family took advantage of the latter’s affect through the “Thing” character, a natural fit within the show’s comically repulsive tropes.  Likewise, a prosthetic arm on an otherwise natural body can also be an jarring visual experience when unexpectedly taking the place of the skin and appendages we expect.

Still from The Addams Family. Image from addamsfamily.com

Many of the standard items included on the uncanny list appear throughout The Digital Eye.  Wendy McMurdo’s Helen, Backstage, Merlin Theater depicts a child and her doppelgänger posing as though there were a mirror between them that disappeared.  Herbert Bayer’s Lonely Metropolitan incorporates disembodied eyes and arms. Takeshi Murata’s amorphous form from a photographed film still in 001 and Jason Salavon’s Every Playboy Centerfold, The 1970s both create ghostlike-forms from their otherwise (relatively) ordinary subject matter.  When viewed in its entirety, The Digital Eye encompasses a fairly complete index of the uncanny valley.

Image: Wendy McMurdo. Helen, Backstage, Merlin Theatre (The Glance). 1995. Pigmented inkjet print. Courtesy of the artist. Image from henryart.org.

However, the more interesting relationship between the uncanny and this exhibition manifests more subtly, through the techniques employed within some of The Digital Eye’s most captivating works. Like many manmade objects, a particular fascination comes along with a photographic spectacle that is not immediately decipherable; the same way one stares from atop the Hoover Dam and attempts to fathom how mid-century technology enabled this sublime structure’s production, a similar curiosity arises when staring into a photograph that appears too composed to be real. Although the increasing prevalence of Photoshop may have dulled this effect in recent years, a fascinatingly unknown quality remains beneath the surface of a digital photograph that seems too composed to be true.

Julie Blackmon. Powerade (from the series Domestic Vacations). 2005. Pigmented inkjet print. Courtesy of the artist and G. Gibson Gallery, Seattle. Image from henryart.org

In The Digital Eye, Julie Blackmon’s pigmented inkjet print Powerade (From the series Domestic Vacations) makes this effect its focal point, integrating otherwise mundane imagery into a disturbing image that commands not so much a look as a blatant stare.  A mere glance at the photograph would suggest a boy playing in a yard. However, with any closer inspection, the red ball, the boy’s back and the blue bottle of Powerade ensnare the on-looking eye, naturally pulling its attention towards these objects existing on an overtly distinct plane from their surroundings.  Looking more closely reveals the “yard” as an estranged garden of sorts, more likely to house gnomes or the Fountain of Youth than the swing set and bicycle that one would expect to find in an ordinary boy’s world.  A sense of uncertainty pervades the entire image; what initially seemed familiar appears strange and hyperreal.  Despite the absence of an object of decided uncanniness, Powerade belongs in the valley as much as any disembodied appendage.

Although psychoanalytic theory has become largely dismissed as irreverent in contemporary society, the prominence of the uncanny within this photography show is not without significance: feared uncertainty prevails in our present moment. The indecisive politics, government upheavals too complex to read from afar, and an unpredictable economy only offer stability in their constant presence; every week similar stories surface in the news, but with conflicting endings. In this sense, The digital eye is also a reflective one, offering a mirror into a state of being less defined by its subject matter and more acutely understood through an inexplicable composition of elements that creates unease without resolution.

Beyond the Beautiful Parking Lot: Lewis Baltz’s Prototypes and the Las Vegas Studio

In Chicago there are two exhibitions of late 1960s architectural photography approximately two miles apart: Las Vegas Studio: Images from the Archives of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown is on view at the Graham Foundation while Lewis Baltz: Prototypes/Ronde de Nuit is presented at the Art Institute. Comparing Las Vegas Studio’s documentary photographs to Baltz’s “Prototypes” seems like it should be a straightforward endeavor. The two sets of images focus on commercial architecture of the west, including signs, parking lots, roadways and building facades. Elements of the New Topographics movement strongly affiliated with Baltz’s practice can also be found among Venturi and Scott Brown’s photographs of the automobile-focused architecture of the Las Vegas Strip. Yet, instead of highlighting these similarities, viewing both exhibitions in rapid succession more clearly highlights the visual distinctions between a group of artistic images posing as documentary photographs and a body of archival photographs presented as conceptual works of art.

Lewis Baltz’s forty Prototypes hang single-file, in numbered order, around the perimeter of a single gallery in the Art Institute’s Modern Wing. Rigid uniformity dominates the space: each silver gelatin print is identical in size and frame, all titled according to the city in which they were taken. The persistent sunlight, stark commercial buildings and absence of people in the images definitively allude to the weather, sensibility and sprawl characteristic of the west coast. Other than this the Prototypes provide minimal details that distinguish the individual California cities from one another.

Lewis Baltz. "Laguna Niguel." 1970. Gelatin silver print. Laguna Art Museum Collection, Anonymous gift, in memory of Beula Prince © Lewis Baltz. Image from artblart.wordpress.com

The notation of arbitrary specifics as the works’ titles causes the images to be positioned as documentary in nature, but this stylization is then contradicted by the way Baltz presents his subjects within the photographs. Each image appears carefully constructed with precise attention paid to the basic photographic elements of composition, contrast and clarity. In Laguna Niguel, a forgettable building shares the stage with an equally banal parking lot, causing neither to be shown it its entirety. Instead, the forms of the building and parking lot together create the work of art; the photographed objects dissipate into a two-dimensional construction as abstracted from reality as the man-made landscape that serves as this artwork’s medium. Through its deep contrasts, isolated lines and highly conscious framing, in Laguna Niguel, the real elements of a city turn into elements of art abstracted from reality.

In contrast to the minimalist installation of the Prototypes, Las Vegas Studio appears ornate in its hanging throughout the rooms and stairwells of the Madler House residential building housing the Graham Foundation. Although Venturi and Scott Brown primarily intended for the images in this exhibition to be used as documentation for their 1968 study of Las Vegas, seeing the photographs independent from the final study raises the question of how they function as works of art in their own right.

It is known that the group visited Ed Ruscha’s studio immediately prior to their arrival in Las Vegas; they also directly reference the artist’s empirical approach in the panoramic, street level series of images titled “Ed Ruscha” elevation of the Strip, an imitation of Every Building on the Sunset Strip. Despite the influence of Ruscha and the use subject matter similar to the pursuits of New Topographics artists, most of the photographs in Las Vegas Studio are overtly aesthetic and composed; highly saturated colors, strategically illuminated neon lights and unexpected juxtapositions between commercial elements suggest the architects aimed to accomplish more than merely document the landscape before them.

"Riviera Casino, Las Vegas, 1968." Students and Professors of the Las Vegas Studio. 1968. Image from johndan.com

Particularly in the context of being framed, matted and hung salon style for exhibition, the Las Vegas photographs appear as though they aspire become works of fine art, rather than documentary footage. Their titles are straightforward and factual like those of the Prototypes, but unlike Baltz’s approach, the meaning of the Las Vegas Studio pieces still gravitates back to the physical subjects; a photograph of the Riviera’s parking lot and sign is entirely about the Riviera’s parking lot and sign. Although this gleaming image is easily among the more beautiful photographs of a parking lot ever created, the work of art is signifier of the casino, more similar to the physical Rivera sign than to the the parking lot of Baltz’s Laguna Niguel. Hardly a failure, the fact that the Las Vegas Studio images aptly represent the landscape of Las Vegas at the time of Venturi and Scott Brown’s seminal study demonstrates the inherent success of the project; when viewed in tandem with Baltz’s Prototypes, the questions raised by each exhibition diverge but ultimately offer a more complete view of their place and time.

Continuing Education: Las Vegas Studio at MOCA-PDC

The 1960 version of Ocean’s Eleven captures the original form of the Las Vegas Strip on film: the elaborate neon, the intimate lounges, the Rat Pack performances and black tie clientele. The special features of the film’s DVD include interviews with cocktail waitresses who worked at the Sands, Flamingo, Sahara, Desert Inn and Dunes casinos during the period of the movie, nostalgically reflecting on this lost era in light of what Las Vegas has come to mean today.  Inevitably, these women express their reservations about the larger scale, the commercial attitudes and the touristic focus now characteristic of the Strip; all were in agreement that the past Las Vegas was preferable to the present.

Trailer for Ocean’s Eleven (1960)

Now on view at MOCA- Pacific Design Center is Las Vegas Studio: Images from the Archives of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, which includes photographs, diagrams and films from the architects’ 1968 project that ultimately resulted in the book Learning from Las Vegas (1972).  The Las Vegas of these images is essentially the Las Vegas preferred by the casino cocktail waitresses; as Christopher Hawthorne describes in his review of Las Vegas Studio,

“What comes across in these photographs is an almost overpowering sense not only of freedom and discovery but also of innocence — although the innocence may well have been at least partly strategic, an element of the architects’ self-mythologizing impulse. Still, Las Vegas in these pictures seems remarkably light on its feet, unburdened by the elaborate, elephantine casino-hotel complexes that now line the Strip.” (Culture Monster 3.30.2010)

Experiencing the exhibition, or even just the catalog, Hawthorne’s point is clearly taken; the photographs are stunning.  Intended as a formal study, Learning from Las Vegas presented the illustrative photographs in an empirical manner. Ed Ruscha’s books, including Every Building on the Sunset Strip and Twentysix Gasoline Stations, were explicitly referenced as sources of inspiration for the project in terms of providing objective views of commercial buildings. The second, most common edition of the book was created with the intention of being affordable to students.  Consequently, the photographs and diagrams were primarily small black and white images with limited contrast; a small number were printed in muted colors in order to minimize printing costs.

Las Vegas Studio: Images from the Archives of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown installation view, MOCA, Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles

Walking into the MOCA space, the vibrancy and clarity of the archive is shocking to any eye accustomed to the way these images were presented in the book.  The majority of the exhibition is hung salon style, across a single wall, adding to the overwhelming impact.  Within individual images, the hues are noticeably warm, even among the few photographs that had the benefit of being printed as full pages or in color. The rosy tint of Caesars Palace Signs and Statuary could not had been inferred from the image’s stark counterpart seen in Learning from Las Vegas; the book’s text never suggested the sky might be shockingly orange behind an image of the Stardust Casino as it was being defined as a “decorated shed.”  Learning from Las Vegas communicated its intricate arguments through relatively banal, objective images, but from the original photographs we see exactly how romanced the architects were by the Strip; indeed,  Las Vegas was beautiful.

"Stardust Hotel and Casino, neon sign, Las Vegas," 1968, photo by students/instructors of the "Learning from Las Vegas Research Studio", © Venturi Scott Brown and Associates Philadelphia , image from moca.org.

The idea that the Las Vegas Strip had an aesthetic quality in the 1960s is now acceptable, thanks to a combination of Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour’s book and general nostalgia, as communicated by both Hawthorne and the Las Vegas cocktail waitresses. Since the Learning from Las Vegas project, the Strip has evolved substantially. Venturi and Scott Brown returned to Vegas in 1994 at the invitation of the BBC and determined that many of the elements from their initial study had changed:

“The Strip has seen a considerable reduction in the number and size of its signs and a parallel evolution from signography to scenography, or from the decorated shed to the duck. Vivid examples of the trend toward scenography include the MGM architectural lion’s head, the Luxor Hotel pyramid, the Excalibur castle, and, most vividly, the Mirage lake cum volcano and Treasure Island Caribbean town.” (“Las Vegas After its Classic Age”; published in Neon, Artcetera, Winter 1995-96; Republished in Iconography and Electronics Upon a Generic Architecture by Robert Venturi. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1996)

The change in architecture from the decorated shed so instrumental to Learning from Las Vegas, to its “duck” antithesis relates to Hawthorne’s assertion that the Strip has lost its lightness over the past 40 years.  While attending panel presentation “Ugly and Ordinary? Las Vegas Studio” at the Pacific Design Center a few weeks ago, I noticed a sense of disdain for the current state of the Strip; the only references to the contemporary Las Vegas during the discussion included a mention of “cultural slumming” by one of the panelists. Yet, to conclude “Las Vegas After its Classic Age,” Venturi and Scott Brown leave readers with only a question: “Would an analysis of our recent journey, from Las Vegas Strip to Las Vegas Boulevard, prove as instructive as the first for architecture?”

Although many dismiss the current Las Vegas Strip to be a large-scale, corporately owned shopping mall, reconsidering commercial, populist architecture is the mode of thought that characterized the original Learning from Las Vegas. The newer things to be learned may extend beyond architecture, but the prevalence of contemporary artists working with Las Vegas as a subject suggests the application of a critical eye to the Strip is still worthwhile. Dave Hickey writes in his essay “Deciding About Las Vegas,”

“…Vegas can’t be framed, only cropped. The worst snapshot can be the best photograph of Vegas because there is everything to see and, dauntingly, nothing much to look at there, except for people looking and people being looked at–and the setting for a thousand dramas. There is no ‘outside’ position. When you are in Vegas, you are onstage, in a theater in the round, a city-sized rococo stage setting, with a professional chorus. You and your fellow revelers are the actors, and as Warhol said, either everyone is a star or no one is.” (The Book on Vegas 27)

"Las Vegas," Lee Friedlander, 2002, gelatin-silver print, 16 x 20 in., image from artnet.com

The drama Hickey references in this essay from the early 2000s is similar to Venturi and Scott Brown’s reassessment of the Strip in 1994. Since that time, Las Vegas has continued to change, now progressing from the dramatic theming of the 90s era towards a de-theming brought on by the Wynn resort and CityCenter projects of recent years.  Since the 90s, contemporary artists ranging from Doug Aitken, Lee Friedlander and Thomas Struth to Olivo Barbieri, Liz Hickok, and Marc Dombrosky have worked with contemporary Las Vegas as a subject for consideration. Knowing this in tandem with the body of photographs and films in Las Vegas Studio demonstrates that the constant change of this city is what may offer the most to explore. Despite the accompanying appreciation for its beauty, nostalgia for “classic Vegas” is limiting when it prevents critical reflection on the present. Perhaps one of the most important modes of thought to learn from Las Vegas is the acceptance of changes that reflect the aspects of culture we otherwise refuse to see.