Sam Vale - Latent: A Hidden History

This is an absorbing piece of work that has been made to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act. The theme for the piece is the non-representation of Gay males in the historical archive - an aspect commonly referred to as part of 'LGBTQ hidden histories'. Vale looks at SEAS (South East Archive of Seaside Photography) looking for potential Gay male cues in the black and white photographs and blows them up into larger scale pieces.

Latent: A Hidden History

Because of historical cultural and political stances Queer people were hidden from mainstream society (and still are to a certain extent as public displays of affection are usually frowned upon). The artist searches for "fleeting moments that were unintentionally recorded" in the archive. These 'Queer-by-proxy' moments (two men standing together, a look in passing, a hand idly resting on a shoulder) are used as metaphors for the real situations that cannot manifest themselves in open society and therefore are not recorded in the historical archive; and even if they were are sometimes omitted or removed for dubious reasons of taste, decency, and embarrassment.

I'm reminded of the work of William E Jones in "Killed: rejected images of the Farm Security Administration" in looking for potential LGBTQ moments rejected and hole-punched through by the FSA editor Roy Stryker:

"Killed" write up

"Latent: A Hidden History" comprises of two parts. The first set of images are the magnified elements that contain potential but ambiguous Gay male identities; the second is the original photograph from which the extraction came, showing a tiny blank space highlighting the notion of hidden Queer histories. This juxtaposition creates a visual dynamic between the two elements that is quite powerful in explaining the process of oppression over the "Other" in a Paternalistic and dominantly Heterosexual society.

I've only seen this work online but enjoyed analysing the ambiguous images and comparing them to their original photographs. There is a sense of living 'some kind of life' in the shadows; unlike my LGBTQ Holocaust body of work, which at times feels like I am making work purely about suffering - about what was done to them, rather than the people themselves. This is because of the limited personal accounts and descriptions that exist - they tend to detail the atrocities and not much about the individuals.

As I write this it occurs to me that I need to re-read "The Men With the Pink Triangle" with a view to extracting something more humane from the text that could prompt me to create visual metaphors about individuals and not suffering. I think this would possibly add a balancing element to the work without detracting from the main thrust of my intent.

Alain Resnais - Night & Fog

This short documentary film was recommended to me by fellow OCA student, Stephanie. The film is mainly black and white stills of the Holocaust juxtaposed against colour shots of the camps taken in the 1950s. As viewers we already bring to the work our preconceived ideas of the holocaust - exposing the dark side of our humanity in a wider political and social context. For me, I was surprised not so much by the mass graves and piles of bodies - we are used to seeing them in the context of the Nazi machine, moving people through its mass extermination system; what struck me was some of the individual images that hint at the barbarity and torture just for the sake of it.

Flicking back and forth between the original stills and the colour scenes of the camps (they had been empty for around ten years when the documentary was made) shows how the horror can so easily be overlooked and erased from memory if we are not careful. It is important to remain vigilant to the possibilities that we can so easily turn to evil deeds under the right circumstances.

"There are those who look at these ruins today
As though the monster were dead and buried beneath them.
Those who take hope again as the image fades
As though there were a cure for the scourge of these camps.
Those who pretend all this happened only once,
At a certain time and in a certain place.
Those who refuse to look around them,
Deaf to the endless cry."

Alain Resnais, Night & Fog. (1954).