A Moment in Time
By Clive G — Can Photography ever really be considered as Art? Whenever that old chestnut comes up, I am always reminded of a character I knew many years ago by the name of Gabriel Winters. Gabriel was a History of Art undergraduate at the same time I was studying Photography and Painting. His blond wavy hair and a peaches-and-cream complexion had turned many heads when he first made an appearance on the leafy campus our respective departments shared with Microbiology and Food Sciences. But Gabriel possessed the beliefs and mannerisms of a Victorian country parson and dressed as if he were taking part in a low budget adaptation of an Anthony Trollope novel. Within a month of the start of his first term, he was a complete laughing stock.
Gabriel was in fact the only offspring of a clergyman. A memory of his ancient parents visiting him one weekend in the Halls of Residence still remains with me after all these years. The other residents, I among them, just stood and gaped in disbelief as the grand old couple emerged from their vintage black Austin Wolseley and Gabriel marched up to them and shook each solemnly by the hand. My memory may be playing tricks on me, but I could swear that his mother was wearing a bustle under her long, black brocade dress.
Gabriel was such a sartorial aberration that I would have been able to identify him from a mile off, at night and in a blizzard. Yet the idea that I might actually have cause to speak to him never crossed my mind. All that changed one Sunday morning in the summer term of my second year.
Towards the end of May, I had received a vituperative dressing down by my photography tutor, who was under the impression, probably well founded, that I had been spending more time in the local hostelry than in the darkroom. So, in an effort to redeem myself, I began going to bed clear-headed and early each evening and heading out at sunrise every morning, bleary eyed, with my camera and tripod.
One of my favourite photography venues at that time was a huge, condemned Victorian Gothic pile that had once been the countryseat of a now extinct aristocratic line. Local tramps had partially removed the boards from one of the downstairs windows and periodically used the place to doss down. I got into the habit of sneaking into the abandoned mansion when nobody was around and taking moody architectural shots and Late photographs.
That particular Sunday morning I was photographing on an upper floor when I was disturbed by a loud shuffling sound coming from the room below. An inebriated tramp had once accosted me there and had managed to extort the price of a couple of bottles of cider out of me before letting me go. But these shuffling and scraping noises sounded nothing like a tramp, but rather more like a heavy piece of furniture being dragged across floorboards. I crept slowly down the ornate spiral staircase to investigate and had just reached the first floor landing when who should appear in the doorway of a once grand bedroom?
“Gabriel!” I shrieked. “You scared the… you scared me half to death. What the… heck are you doing here? At this time?” I didn’t want to be too extreme in my expletives. Gabriel was, after all, a clergyman’s son!
“Oh, hello Old Chap,” he bumbled, his smooth cheeks, which had clearly never had cause to be acquainted with a razor, turning the colour of strawberries. “It seems you’ve caught me at a rather awkward moment.” He looked down at the walnut cabinet he had been dragging across the floor.
“So I see! And where are you going with that?” I said.
“”Well, Old Chap, it seemed so forlorn in there. It’s 18th century, you know. Wouldn’t it be such a shame if it got lost?”
“I see. So you are rescuing it?”
“I suppose you could put it like that, Old Chap.”
“The name’s Clive, by the way.”
“Quite. But if I may be so bold as to ask, what are you doing here? At this time?”
“Taking photographs for my end of year exhibition, if you must know.”
“Taking… photographs. I say, are you one of those fellows from the Art Department?” He moved closer and peered at me as if I were a two-headed snake in a jar of formaldehyde. “May I see what you are doing?”
I led him upstairs to where my tripod and camera were still set up. As I set about getting ready to take a photograph, Gabriel watched me with utter astonishment, as if the two-headed snake had suddenly come to life.
I suppose at that point I could have made my excuses and moved off to another part of that enormous building. But instead I helped him carry the walnut cabinet down the stairs and out through the downstairs window.
We found an old wheelbarrow in one of the sheds and used it to transport the cabinet, hidden under an old blanket with my tripod on top, along the deserted early morning streets. Aiding and abetting is probably what the police would have charged me with, had we been apprehended. Somehow, though, we made it back to Gabriel’s room unhindered and spent the next few hours discussing Art and drinking cup after cup of Darjeeling tea, which Gabriel served meticulously in a beautiful hand-painted Royal Doulton China tea set.
Gabriel, I soon learned, firmly believed that Art History had reached its zenith with the Pre-Raphaelites, that motley band of English painters, poets and critics who came together in the mid-19th century to champion a return to the aesthetic ideals of quattrocento Italy. For Gabriel, all developments and movements in Art after the Pre-Raphaelites were just symptomatic of Art’s headlong decline. And as for the idea that Photography could be considered Art!
“Come, come, Old chap. Photography is just a mechanical means of recording reality. Where is the skill in it?”
“Gabriel, artists have aspired to take photographs for thousands of years, ever since they started to paint on cave walls.”
“Whatever can you mean?”
“Think about it. Most of the paintings ever painted up until the invention of photography have depicted a moment in time. Take the most famous English painting, the Hay Wain. It’s a photograph in everything but medium. The people on the hay cart, the little dog on the riverbank, all frozen in motion, just as in a photograph. Except John Constable didn’t have a camera, so he spent months painting that split second.
“I’m not sure I can see your reasoning.”
“My reasoning is quite simple, Gabriel. Painters, including many of the greatest, painted pictures that depicted frozen moments in time. They had to paint them because photography hadn’t yet been invented. So, you see, as far as the History of Art goes, photography has primacy over painting, not the other way round.”
It was to be the first of many such debates over endless cups of delicious Darjeeling tea. I remember once bringing along a beautiful book of photographs by Diane Arbus, sure that if anything was to challenge his notion that photography was just a cold transcriber of reality it would be her elegiac, haunting portraits. But when he opened the book at random to an image of a pitiful and bewildered old couple standing in their living room with their son, who is about three metres tall, he just threw his head back and laughed heartily, revealing a full set of perfect teeth.
In the end, though, I had to stop visiting Gabriel. Not because I got fed up with his priggish manner or antiquated ideas, but rather that he became increasingly popular with the post-graduate Microbiology students from Commonwealth countries in Africa. Whenever I passed his window, I would see them crammed into his room, laughing and chatting, while Gabriel poured tea into the Royal Doulton China teacups resting on the 18th century walnut cabinet that he had lovingly restored. I suspect that those students had found in Gabriel a quaint little piece of the ‘true’ England they had imagined as teenagers in Kenya, or Ghana, or Botswana, long before they ever set foot in the harsh reality of 1980s Thatherite Britain.
Between pillaging stately homes and entertaining foreign students, how on earth Gabriel ever got time to study I shall never know. But study he must have, for he got a First Class Degree and won a Scholarship to do his MA at the prestigious Courtauld Institute of Art at the University of London.
“Gabriel, I hear congratulations are in order,” I said to him on what was to be our last meeting.
“Thank you so much, Old Chap,” he replied, beaming. I don’t think he ever really knew my name.
“What is your research topic?” I asked.
“Victorian Funerary Sculpture.”
“Fascinating!” I said. “Can’t wait to read your thesis.”
Gabriel was in fact the only offspring of a clergyman. A memory of his ancient parents visiting him one weekend in the Halls of Residence still remains with me after all these years. The other residents, I among them, just stood and gaped in disbelief as the grand old couple emerged from their vintage black Austin Wolseley and Gabriel marched up to them and shook each solemnly by the hand. My memory may be playing tricks on me, but I could swear that his mother was wearing a bustle under her long, black brocade dress.
Gabriel was such a sartorial aberration that I would have been able to identify him from a mile off, at night and in a blizzard. Yet the idea that I might actually have cause to speak to him never crossed my mind. All that changed one Sunday morning in the summer term of my second year.
Towards the end of May, I had received a vituperative dressing down by my photography tutor, who was under the impression, probably well founded, that I had been spending more time in the local hostelry than in the darkroom. So, in an effort to redeem myself, I began going to bed clear-headed and early each evening and heading out at sunrise every morning, bleary eyed, with my camera and tripod.
One of my favourite photography venues at that time was a huge, condemned Victorian Gothic pile that had once been the countryseat of a now extinct aristocratic line. Local tramps had partially removed the boards from one of the downstairs windows and periodically used the place to doss down. I got into the habit of sneaking into the abandoned mansion when nobody was around and taking moody architectural shots and Late photographs.That particular Sunday morning I was photographing on an upper floor when I was disturbed by a loud shuffling sound coming from the room below. An inebriated tramp had once accosted me there and had managed to extort the price of a couple of bottles of cider out of me before letting me go. But these shuffling and scraping noises sounded nothing like a tramp, but rather more like a heavy piece of furniture being dragged across floorboards. I crept slowly down the ornate spiral staircase to investigate and had just reached the first floor landing when who should appear in the doorway of a once grand bedroom?
“Gabriel!” I shrieked. “You scared the… you scared me half to death. What the… heck are you doing here? At this time?” I didn’t want to be too extreme in my expletives. Gabriel was, after all, a clergyman’s son!
“Oh, hello Old Chap,” he bumbled, his smooth cheeks, which had clearly never had cause to be acquainted with a razor, turning the colour of strawberries. “It seems you’ve caught me at a rather awkward moment.” He looked down at the walnut cabinet he had been dragging across the floor.
“So I see! And where are you going with that?” I said.
“”Well, Old Chap, it seemed so forlorn in there. It’s 18th century, you know. Wouldn’t it be such a shame if it got lost?”
“I see. So you are rescuing it?”
“I suppose you could put it like that, Old Chap.”
“The name’s Clive, by the way.”
“Quite. But if I may be so bold as to ask, what are you doing here? At this time?”
“Taking photographs for my end of year exhibition, if you must know.”
“Taking… photographs. I say, are you one of those fellows from the Art Department?” He moved closer and peered at me as if I were a two-headed snake in a jar of formaldehyde. “May I see what you are doing?”
I led him upstairs to where my tripod and camera were still set up. As I set about getting ready to take a photograph, Gabriel watched me with utter astonishment, as if the two-headed snake had suddenly come to life.
I suppose at that point I could have made my excuses and moved off to another part of that enormous building. But instead I helped him carry the walnut cabinet down the stairs and out through the downstairs window.
We found an old wheelbarrow in one of the sheds and used it to transport the cabinet, hidden under an old blanket with my tripod on top, along the deserted early morning streets. Aiding and abetting is probably what the police would have charged me with, had we been apprehended. Somehow, though, we made it back to Gabriel’s room unhindered and spent the next few hours discussing Art and drinking cup after cup of Darjeeling tea, which Gabriel served meticulously in a beautiful hand-painted Royal Doulton China tea set.
Gabriel, I soon learned, firmly believed that Art History had reached its zenith with the Pre-Raphaelites, that motley band of English painters, poets and critics who came together in the mid-19th century to champion a return to the aesthetic ideals of quattrocento Italy. For Gabriel, all developments and movements in Art after the Pre-Raphaelites were just symptomatic of Art’s headlong decline. And as for the idea that Photography could be considered Art!
“Come, come, Old chap. Photography is just a mechanical means of recording reality. Where is the skill in it?”
“Gabriel, artists have aspired to take photographs for thousands of years, ever since they started to paint on cave walls.”
“Whatever can you mean?”
“Think about it. Most of the paintings ever painted up until the invention of photography have depicted a moment in time. Take the most famous English painting, the Hay Wain. It’s a photograph in everything but medium. The people on the hay cart, the little dog on the riverbank, all frozen in motion, just as in a photograph. Except John Constable didn’t have a camera, so he spent months painting that split second.
“I’m not sure I can see your reasoning.”
“My reasoning is quite simple, Gabriel. Painters, including many of the greatest, painted pictures that depicted frozen moments in time. They had to paint them because photography hadn’t yet been invented. So, you see, as far as the History of Art goes, photography has primacy over painting, not the other way round.”
It was to be the first of many such debates over endless cups of delicious Darjeeling tea. I remember once bringing along a beautiful book of photographs by Diane Arbus, sure that if anything was to challenge his notion that photography was just a cold transcriber of reality it would be her elegiac, haunting portraits. But when he opened the book at random to an image of a pitiful and bewildered old couple standing in their living room with their son, who is about three metres tall, he just threw his head back and laughed heartily, revealing a full set of perfect teeth.
In the end, though, I had to stop visiting Gabriel. Not because I got fed up with his priggish manner or antiquated ideas, but rather that he became increasingly popular with the post-graduate Microbiology students from Commonwealth countries in Africa. Whenever I passed his window, I would see them crammed into his room, laughing and chatting, while Gabriel poured tea into the Royal Doulton China teacups resting on the 18th century walnut cabinet that he had lovingly restored. I suspect that those students had found in Gabriel a quaint little piece of the ‘true’ England they had imagined as teenagers in Kenya, or Ghana, or Botswana, long before they ever set foot in the harsh reality of 1980s Thatherite Britain.
Between pillaging stately homes and entertaining foreign students, how on earth Gabriel ever got time to study I shall never know. But study he must have, for he got a First Class Degree and won a Scholarship to do his MA at the prestigious Courtauld Institute of Art at the University of London.
“Gabriel, I hear congratulations are in order,” I said to him on what was to be our last meeting.
“Thank you so much, Old Chap,” he replied, beaming. I don’t think he ever really knew my name.
“What is your research topic?” I asked.
“Victorian Funerary Sculpture.”
“Fascinating!” I said. “Can’t wait to read your thesis.”
— hewholuvsfotos@gmail.com
Saturday 24th, May 2014 / 01:40 Written by
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