Photography: A Visually Unfolding Process
In this epoch, artistic photography has become a very risky medium: everyone is a photographer; apparently, with no problem whatsoever, nearly everyone can indulge in digital photography with his or her mobile phone. The whole business has almost become a banality. So at the end of the day, what makes the difference between someone who takes pictures as a pastime and a visual artist who works with photography as a medium?
First, the degree of consciousness. A photograph is always a reproduction. On the one hand, with seeming ease it can coincide with what it shows, but on the other hand, it is not what it shows. Only a photographer who is simultaneously aware of this (inevitable) referent function of a reproduction and at the same time of the ambiguity of this function can create an image that can hold its own as an autonomous language. The second point has to do with how one deals with the medium. A tourist who takes pictures is not concerned so much with the intelligent use of the technique as with the result of its use: the best possible photograph of a person, a landscape, a monument, etc. – in short, a reproduction. In contrast, and paradoxically enough, the photographic artist essentially attempts to exploit the complex possibilities of the medium as thoroughly and intelligently as he or she can. The idea is to create an image world.
The risk associated with representative photography – to which a professional photographer is also subject – eventuates when the photographer works around a theme. He or she easily gives in to the temptation of taking photographs that are supposed to illustrate or document this theme, preferably with a whiff of sensation. This is an instance of photography whose aim is to convince on a non-artistic basis, for example through humane and emotional arguments. Margot Dieleman is acutely aware of the pitfalls of the photography of persuasion and as a consequence works with her medium in accordance with unyielding principles. You could describe her approach as almost ascetic, analytical, rational, and it is her principles that lend strength to her exhibition as an artistic project. Strangely enough, thanks to this way of working, her vision of schizophrenia takes on a plastic form that is more authentic and more convincing than any emotionally charged exhibition could ever hope to be.
It may be asked what accounts for the power of her photographs. Unquestionably it lies in the concept of the exhibition. Margot always works with series of images in which an image world unfolds organically – a virtual reality that comes alive in her photographs. Photography for her is a visually unfolding process that we actively experience along with her. She forces us to see reality differently from how we are used to seeing it and she does this through images that have a higher reality value than the day-to-day eyeful, which is falsified by a plethora of prejudices.Only technically perfect photographs possess this power. That is why Margot is almost fanatically meticulous about the quality of her image material. It goes without saying that she manipulates her photographs; however, she does not do this through cheap effects but rather by means of honest experiments with all the possibilities afforded by the complex interplay between photograph, camera and the impact of contextual factors. Her approach is no different from that of a gene biologist in his laboratory or a painter in her studio.
Moreover, Margot Dieleman knows exactly how to go about her project, which she experiences as an event with which she engages with a constantly expanding consciousness. It becomes a growing part of her own life history as expressed through images. It is therefore only logical that she does not portray the symptoms or the visible characteristics of schizophrenia. She visualizes the virtual process with such artistic serenity and such clinical detachment that like her, we do not see the photographs as a set of referents that are propagated toward our eyes; rather we experience these photographs as events that unfold in our eyes. Along with Margot, we build up the exhibition gradually within ourselves. Every series takes us a bit more deeply into the world of uncertain self-experience and possible disorientation in reality.
Two examples: the loss of the sense of reality that you as a viewer empathically feel in looking at the two series featuring indistinct figures is disturbing in the extreme; and how keenly do you experience your own powerlessness when viewing the series of photographs of a young girl whose self-image is blurry and will never be anything other than blurry.
Margot Dieleman imparts to photography the power of an authentic (image) language. Her way of showing us things has never been talked about in the history of photography.
Daan Anthuenis