Digging deeper into Tod Papageorge’s ‘Passing Through Eden’
Over the last couple of years, there’s been much discourse and deliberation over Tod Papageorge’s book Passing Through Eden. In March, I was lucky enough to be able to attend a talk he gave in London as part of the events surrounding his nomination for the 2009 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize.
For those new to the work, Passing Through Eden was influenced by the biblical Book of Genesis:
The sequencing of the book, or at least the first half of it, is quite literally based on the first six chapters of Genesis. The world, or Eden, or Central Park, is created in the first half-dozen pictures, one for each day of the Creation: Adam appears as a pile of molten dust, then as his radiant self; Eve arrives opposite a picture of bleached branches that, to me, suggests her emergence from Adam’s rib; and on it goes… – Tod Papageorge
Flipping through my own copy of the book, I’d often speculated on the nature and emphasis of this biblical allusion, wondering just how explicit it was beyond the initial few pages. With my days of enforced scripture class long past, I struggled to discern much beyond a few vague inferences and eventually resigned myself to a state of muted perplexity.
Fortunately, during the presentation Papageorge generously volunteered some insights into his editing process and I found myself both surprised and impressed by the ambition behind the work. Rather than entrusting to a generally amorphous Genesis-themed representation, individual photographs were selected to denote characters and incidents within specific verses of the bible.
To illustrate, here are a few images that were specifically highlighted: I’ve added relevant excerpts from Genesis to flesh out the back story. With these images serving as chronological markers, I was then also able to identify additional connections from the biblical text.
So God created man in his own image
Adam
And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
Eve
Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
Adam and Eve
Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made.
The Serpent
And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
Eve and the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
Eve eating the fruit
And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.
'The eyes of both were opened'
Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.
So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
The explusion from Paradise
And Adam knew Eve his wife…
'And Adam knew Eve his wife...'
and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord.
And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.
Adam and Cain
Adam and Abel
Cain and Abel
And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.
The murder of Abel
And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper?
And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.
And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand;
God admonishing Cain
And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.
The marked Cain
Until that point, I had never quite realised how deeply down the rabbit hole Papageorge had descended; it would be fair to say that neither myself or the majority of the audience expected such an intimate relationship between the photos and the text. Afterwards, I asked my friends A and Z for their opinions, which proceeded to differ by the range of the alphabet:
It’s completely changed my approach to looking at the work, I’ll have to re-examine everything in light of this! – A
Without doubt it’s a clever exercise and adds some meat to the project, but ultimately, and in the nicest way, they’re still just photos made in Central Park, no more, no less. – Z
Equally provoking was the reminder that the Genesis motif had been conceived only as the book was being assembled, long after the photos had been made. What A and Z said started me thinking about the effectiveness of similar projects that have been conceptualised post-hoc, after the act of making the work. However, I soon ran into difficulty when identifying strongly-themed projects that were admittedly ‘post-hoc’; it’s something that never seems to be advertised as such.
Alec Soth’s The Last Days of W sounds like it was made post-hoc, while Jason Fulford’s Raising Frogs for $ $ $ (some pictures here) might fall under this category too, but beyond that few obvious candidates sprang immediately to mind (please feel free to add to this list by leaving a comment).
Without wanting to enter into a deep philosophical and theoretical debate (but with a hankering for a shallow one), I posed the question to some friends: can you think of reasons why projects like these appear to be a rarity?
One theory was that they were more common than admitted to:
I even suspect many photographers are lying when they say they had it all planned in advance and that they spent ages working on one particular concept, when in fact they just threw it together at the end. It feels like the former approach is regarded as more respectable: smarter and more insightful. – R
If lying is too strong a word, than perhaps a post-facto recognition of organic growth:
And honestly, I think the most lying happens when someone realizes that they’ve stumbled across their subject matter which they happen to have been shooting for years, but just haven’t realized it. Then, upon realization, they’ve been doing it on purpose all along, naturally. – M
The band played on, leading to a thought-provoking discussion which arose from a query by Eliot Shepard regarding the difficulty and validity of bringing meaning to work seemingly made at random. Reading through it, the point being made was that ultimately of course, it doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t matter how the photos were made or if there was any conscious intent behind their making or whether said intent was later attached to them. All that matters is that they “work” as a collective whole. A photographer sufficiently talented, ruthless and intelligent will find a successful approach to photographing, editing and sequencing.
As Michael David Murphy put it:
A collection of strong photographs held together by an oblique concept (that allows the viewer the space to breathe and create their own connections) is an experience that can’t be touched by an easy-to-describe project with an air-tight, marketable concept populated with unfeeling, anaemic pictures.
The concept is not king. Randomness is a myth.
Does Passing Through Eden succeed in this respect? The answer has to be undoubtedly yes. The Genesis theme, while fascinating (especially upon further revelation), isn’t evident to many readers, nor is it necessary to the success of the images. Instead, it hangs like a delicate thread throughout the book, sometimes glimpsed, flitting in and out of the light. There are no heavy-handed concepts that burst forth to remorselessly hammer themselves into the viewer’s psyche; rather, sufficient latitude is preserved for individuals to draw their own conclusions. The work can be successfully appreciated in either complete ignorance, semi-awareness (with the perception of a palpable yet indistinct Genesis reference: my state of “muted perplexity”), or the full awareness that comes with being able to connect the dots between individual images.
Papageorge himself said it best:
…the fact is that attempting to weave these disparate images into some twentieth-century New York City version of the First Story gave me a form that I felt could provide a much more flexible armature for the shape of the book (and the large number of pictures I wanted to include in it) than the usual photographic monograph. I also wanted to make a book that could be understood in as many ways as possible, even if it risked the possibility that a reader more interested in decoding the sequence of Biblical references could well miss the ambition informing the pictures, and what I hope is the poetry animating them.
Clever man that he is, that goal has successfully been achieved.
Another clever man is Alec Soth. While the Last Days of W may not have been well-received in some quarters (indeed that particular critique highlights some of the potential minefields in post-facto projects), Soth has been spectacularly successful in other endeavours.
I recall having a convivial chat with someone quite high up the Magnum food chain about this:
You know, that Alec Soth is a very, very clever fellow.
Really?
Yeah… you know NIAGARA of course? It has a theme of love running throughout:there’s a repeated heart motif in many of the images. But did you know that to maintain this, Soth also actually POSED the couples he photographed in a shape of a heart?? Now THAT’S clever!
Regardless of the veracity of this tale and Soth’s actual intentions, the best part about this anecdote is that like any truly great conspiracy theory, there’s just enough evidence for it to be vaguely plausible. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, it’s just a fascinating (or ridiculous, depending on your perspective) story that may add to the NIAGARA mystique.
Take a look for yourself: do you see hearts? Do you care?
Aleisha and Joe
Martha and Anthony
Michelle and Pedro
As many have already noted: he’s a clever man that Alec Soth…
All photographs in this article © Tod Papageorge and Alec Soth respectively.
Passing Through Eden: Photographs of Central Park by Tod Papageorge. NIAGARA by Alec Soth.
Additional notes
Blake Andrews includes a great comparison with Robert Crumb.
Thanks for shining some light on the editing process. The Eliot Shepard discussion was very interesting as well.
“they’re still just photos made in Central Park, no more, no less.”
I tend to agree, but what I do find interesting is how words (& concepts) can alter the perception of a piece of work. of course, it can certainly add depth and nuance but on the other side, I think some photographers can fuck up a project by choosing their words (& concepts) poorly.
I simply wonder how much direction you need from words to intuitively understand a body of work.
I'm no expert on Jungian archetypes, but I think with using stories such as Genesis, you can tap into stories that don't need words because we are simply programmed to respond to certain mythologies regardless of culture or social-economic background. I don't think that necessarily means that people should feel obligated to create “universal” work, but I do prefer it to the other extreme, the often cold and lifeless products of the hyper-referential academic world. Of course there are many points between these two poles but the medium has to be taken into account, photography is a democratic art form and I think divorcing it from humanistic qualities of the shared experience really loses something important, as when the concept overwhelms the actual photographs. Words seem to be most appropriate for didactic work, but every word reduces the mystery and atmosphere, so it's a matter of priorities.
but every word reduces the mystery and atmosphere
I think that's the key for me right now, in terms of the work I seem to be looking at a lot. Work with a bit of ambiguity, that keeps you wondering a bit about what's going on, where the viewer often ends up constructing his/her own allegories. Look at the Mark Powell images in the previous post, they're a great example.
In terms of work I've been looking at recently, Thobias Faldt is another example, for me.
Man, Northern Europeans
great comment bryan. care to elaborate?
Oh my, where to start. Rather that just tease the fray, let’s go right for the jugular.
“It doesn’t matter how the photos were made or if there was any conscious intent behind their making or whether said intent was later attached to them.”
This is a symptom of the futility of photography as a medium to achieve something.
Call me old fashioned, but the end result of a media effort is often to communicate something worth communicating (even if it is just a vague mood) using techniques people will feel entertained by while they are waiting for the ’something’ to act on them.
This is the case with all media whether it’s music, movies, or photographs.
The soul-destroying aspect of photography is that the elements of communication (especially candid communication) so scarce and the vocabulary so clumsy and the conversion from the three dimensional world to two-dimensional media so widely unpredictable (both with widely good results as bad results in comparison to expectations) that it’s an inefficient media to communicate with in comparison to it’s media cousins mentioned above.
if you take that sentiment above to it’s logical conclusion you discover from a productivity point of view you are much better off just setting your camera to auto-pilot and taking grab-shots your entirely life, at least then your own lack of vision will not constrain the possibility of Winogrand, genius-like composition solutions through pure luck. Joni Karanka has proven this, How many shot’s in his best edit do you think were the result of even looking through the viewfinder?
Of course that logical conclusion doesn’t prevail and I still think the absurd effort it takes to get the miniscule amount of meat out of Alaskan king crab is still something I find worthwhile to do.
But I simply don’t want to subscribe to the “go out and collect pretty pictures” and let the story fall out of the best edit, especially if it’s like P.G. which was basically a taxonomy project first, a project where it’s base edit was just held together because it was a bunch of pretty pictures of people in the same park.
I think (like with other media) without a deliberate ambition in mind ahead of time you are just going to go around a pick up coins that were dropped for you rather than look in places you wouldn’t look to find the currency you need to shape your story (again, not ‘story’ as linear or instructive, ‘story’ as visual intention).
Hin, after the fall is coherent and deliberate and I don’t think it could have happened ‘as efficiently’ without some precognition both in how you wanted it to look, feel and speak. Since it’s one of the better projects I know if it seem a good way to end with evidence that precog is the way to go.
That being said with a 100+ roll back-log of scanning, maybe you are just taking pictures of everything you can get to via public transportation, that’s the real project cohesion, and the images that fall out of that are just the pretty ones
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btw, Didn't MDM attend a presentation given by Roger Ballen?
I think hearing how Roger had that Edgar Allan Poe'sh visual approach and message in his mind 'before' he set out on his communication mission (and he did in fact allow the chance of candid to intervene) would make him a hero in this equation.
for me it's possibly proof that by knowing first what you want to share introduces a higher propensity to 'find' images that would better cement your message.
I wonder how much light he could shed on the precognition aspect of still-image work.
…make good photographs.
“I think (like with other media) without a deliberate ambition in mind ahead of time you are just going to go around a pick up coins that were dropped for you rather than look in places you wouldn’t look to find the currency you need to shape your story (again, not ‘story’ as linear or instructive, ‘story’ as visual intention).”
I don't think you need deliberate ambition. what if your visual subconscious takes you in a different direction than what you initially planned? I know for me, I find myself through editing, and more often than not, the photographs I tend to gravitate to while editing are vastly different than the photographs I was confident would be keepers in the field.
So once you start stringing the surprises you find through editing, you can end up with something that's completely different than what you may have intended.
This goes back to the role of words. A photographer might intuitively understand the ambition of the project, but might not be able to articulate it in words. And from observing the commentary from the fine art photography world, if you can't articulate your work in words, then you don't really know what you're doing.
It's odd, this association photography has with words.
JTP – is there something specific here that you'd like us to take a look at, or address? I'm missing the thrust of your comment, and am not sure what you mean in few sections, specifically:
“especially if it’s like P.G. which was basically a taxonomy project first”
or this:
“you discover from a productivity point of view you are much better off just setting your camera to auto-pilot and taking grab-shots your entirely life, at least then your own lack of vision will not constrain the possibility of Winogrand, genius-like composition solutions through pure luck.”
In reference to JTP's comment:
“especially if it’s like P.G. which was basically a taxonomy project first”
Without wanting to get too deep into semantics, I think if you look at the book, Papageorge (P.G.)'s work is far more varied than your standard taxonomy (if there is such a classification), so I don't think one can really label it under that clasification.
Without wanting to get too deep into semantics, of course.
FYI, Blake Andrews has an interesting piece on the matter, comparing Papageorge's work with Robert Crumb's.
Going through my book collection for other works that may have been conceived post-hoc.
Adam Jeppesen's Wake could be a potential candidate, only because much of it was made while Jeppesen was on assignment. It's a line ball call, but the work is so magnificently atmospheric and coherent that I find myself doubting this assertion.
Interesting to consider which books & projects might have been developed (to a greater degree than most project shooting) “post-hoc”, in the edit. Two on my shelf that have that appearance would be OK OK OK by Mike Slack, and Golden Palms by Ed Panar. I should ask them, or maybe I already have?
Not sure that calling this (or these) “post-hoc” is the best way to consider it. “Lifestyle” is a swing and a miss, too. Hrrmmm.
well, aren't you going down the path of “The photography-integrated-into-life method” that was debated a few weeks ago?
http://blakeandrews.blogspot.com/2009/05/observ...
And really, doesn't kind of go back to 'The Democratic Forest'? Or even further? I guess it seems what's brewing here is a discussion about what even constitutes a project. i know from talking to Raoul, that he and I feel that what we consider projects/edits right now might change over time. It seems the web has opened up the possibility of creating multiple interpretations and representations of your work. Look at the way 'After the Fall' has evolved over the last couple of years. And I'm sure it's nowhere near evolving and maturing.
Good discussion, my concern with not having some intention ahead of picture making is that there can be no measure of success or failure, I remember an artist telling me that her work 'raised questions to which there were really no right or wrong answers'….'then you are doing nothing' I felt like telling her ( I didn't because she was very cute ) . Its a cop out, you risk nothing to produce work that is intended to 'allow the viewer to make their own interpretation'….viewers of any art work are going to do that anyway.
Your intention can be as simple or loose as 'I'm going out on the streets with my camera and I'm simply going to react to unfolding events and let the street reveal itself to me' but I think you should have one.
On a tangential note regarding talking about your work and allowing users to make their own interpretations, I was reading this interesting article today on myartspace on the writing and value of artist statements:
I’ve noticed two opinionated sides when it comes to the need for an artist statement. The supportive side will claim that the artist statement is of importance because it helps guide viewers so that they have a better understanding of the art they are viewing. In the extreme people will go as far as to say that the artist statement is a reflection of how well the artist in question can communicate both verbally and visually– implying that an artist who writes a poor artist statement is at least partially discredited as an artist– as in the validity of his or her art may also be questioned.
The opposing side will claim that the artist statement is not necessary because the artwork should be the statement. People who oppose artist statements generally feel that the statement can become a distraction as far as the artwork is concerned. In the extreme those who oppose artist statements will go as far as to say that the statement is an insult to all visual artists because it cheapens the value of visual language by projecting the idea that visual art fails to communicate openly with viewers.
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Something I want to add to your discussion about post-hoc conceptualising of projects (sparked by Tod P's Eden book)… sorry, this is 4-5 months late for this discussion… but it seems to me that art schools, BA/MA photography programs are a big reason why artists/photographers might play down the fact that projects come together sometimes with little intention. Or even are created completely after photos were made.
There is a very entrenched view that projects should be created conceptually before a picture is ever taken in the academic world. It isn't the fault of art institutions really; they have to justify why they exist, and they exist to teach people a particular way of working. If someone comes along and 'throws it together at the end' then why take an art course? It is an attitude that art institutions can't afford to support.
From Hin's article:
I even suspect many photographers are lying when they say they had it all planned in advance and that they spent ages working on one particular concept, when in fact they just threw it together at the end. It feels like the former approach is regarded as more respectable: smarter and more insightful. – R
The planning-in-advance approach is more respected, but I think that sometimes people who haven't gone through art school are actually much freer than those of us who have been through academic training. I remember at one crit being told that the fact that my 'series' contained both landscape and portrait formats was problematic. Where does this idea that everything must be worked in series and be identical formats come from? This is very popular idea in photo MA world. And for some practitioners its important, but certainly not for everyone. I say, explore.
Something I want to add to your discussion about post-hoc conceptualising of projects (sparked by Tod P's Eden book)… sorry, this is 4-5 months late for this discussion… but it seems to me that art schools, BA/MA photography programs are a big reason why artists/photographers might play down the fact that projects come together sometimes with little intention. Or even are created completely after photos were made.
There is a very entrenched view that projects should be created conceptually before a picture is ever taken in the academic world. It isn't the fault of art institutions really; they have to justify why they exist, and they exist to teach people a particular way of working. If someone comes along and 'throws it together at the end' then why take an art course? It is an attitude that art institutions can't afford to support.
From Hin's article:
I even suspect many photographers are lying when they say they had it all planned in advance and that they spent ages working on one particular concept, when in fact they just threw it together at the end. It feels like the former approach is regarded as more respectable: smarter and more insightful. – R
The planning-in-advance approach is more respected, but I think that sometimes people who haven't gone through art school are actually much freer than those of us who have been through academic training. I remember at one crit being told that the fact that my 'series' contained both landscape and portrait formats was problematic. Where does this idea that everything must be worked in series and be identical formats come from? This is very popular idea in photo MA world. And for some practitioners its important, but certainly not for everyone. I say, explore.
[...] Backdrifts: Re-evaluating a Project Posted by brayn – November 24, 2009 Hollywood, Calif. “I even suspect many photographers are lying when they say they had it all planned in advance and that they spent ages working on one particular concept, when in fact they just threw it together at the end. It feels like the former approach is regarded as more respectable: smarter and more insightful.” – Raoul Gatepin [...]