What remains: photographs, the corpse, and empty places

Abstract

This article explores the work of Sally Mann, Berni Searle, Ana Mendieta, and Shirin Neshat in relation to the trace-like emblem of the corpse. The corpse or corpse-like body is here read as allegorical of the body’s inevitable decay and disappearance as well as allegorical of the photograph itself –– both paradoxically entangled with transience and the desire for fixation. The skin of the body and of the photograph ages: it creases, bruises, folds, and wrinkles. The metonymic fragility of the skin of the corpse-like body and of the photograph is thus indexically enfolded with time — with complex memory processes, with absence and fleetingness of presence, distance and proximity, desire and violence, longing and loss. Marked by temporality and historicity, the corpse-like body in and of the photograph in the work of Mann, Searle, Mendieta, and Neshat presents the viewer-reader-writer with the haunting presence of always already inadequate.

Die artikel ondersoek die werk van Sally Mann, Berni Searle, Ana Mendieta, en Shirin Neshat met betrekking tot emblematiese spore van die lyk. Die lyk of lyk-agtige liggaam word hier gelees as allegories van die liggaam se onvermydelike vergankliklikheid en verdwyning en ook as allegories van die foto self –– beide paradoksaal betrokke by verganklikheid en die begeerte na fiksering. Die vel van ’n liggaam sowel as van ’n foto verouder: dit verkreukel, kneus, vou en verrimpel. Die metonimiese broosheid van die vel van die lykagtige liggaam en van die foto is dus indeksikaal met tyd vervleg –– met komplekse prosesse van herinnering, met afwesigheid en vlugtige teenwoordigheid, afstand en nabyheid, begeerte en geweld, verlange en verlies. Met tydelikheid en historisiteit as kenmerke bied die lykagtige liggaam in en van die die foto by Mann, Searle, Mendieta, en Neshat die betragterleser-skrywer met die kwellende aanwesigheid van altyd onvoldoende “bewyse”. Laasgenoemde het betrekking op (kunshistoriese) representasie en pynig ons identiteitsbesef.