JvT: That is similar to the question I received last year from a design agency and the art schools in The Hague and Eindhoven (The Netherlands) to give a lecture about image editing. Also at the masters degree course for visual communication in the United States, where I am a couple of times a year, I have noticed a growing interest for this subject from our students. For the last five years, the number of students interested in this type of education is growing who want to change the focus of their research from technology and aesthetics to meaning and analysis. This stems from questions like: “What the hell am I doing?” A feeling of discomfort, which is connected to the mainly decorative and logistic solutions designers are engaged with under pressure of commerce.
The students, who conduct practical and theoretical research at this kind of institutions, have questions about the possibilities of a broader social engagement than a merely commercial one. Being a designer means you add to cultural signification, that may be modest on your own, but design in total makes a heavy mark to the way in which we as consumer look at the world and are engaged with it. And because of this practical experience with producing images, theoretical knowledge and thinking about the role of the image in the media are of great importance. Although the belief in the importance of the word in the dealing with things is fortunately greatly diminished, this does not mean that our visual language has improved. The increase in the use of the photographic image in mass media since the late nineteenth century has, because of the expansion of the information economy, caused a gigantic visual production and this revolution driven by market and technology produces an avalanche of images. But this world-wide culture does not benefit the production of images in a qualitative and opinion building way. The idiom of media languages limits the size and structure of the languages of which we are a part. Languages which map the world in a different way, or languages with a limited use, of which we are also a part, are hardly or not at all used.
Because of this greatest common denominator the versatility of human experience is severely at risk. Former generations have worked hard to find alternatives for such a language dominated by economics. But in practice, only remarkably few people seem to be able to create a more profound grammar of viewing.
In our research at Rode Island School of Design, which you might call something like ‘visual direction’, we try to do something about this. But again and again, it becomes clear how badly informed designers, photographers and other image-makers are and how little experience they have with the possibilities of expression in visual language. This is rooted in the circumstances in which we work. Visual communication makes a living, apart from supplying technological and organisational services, mainly with providing an attractive identity for institutions and their products.
Visual communication serves private and commercial interests, which make merchandise out of knowledge, information and recreation. As a result one notices the decline for instance in The Netherlands and in the United States of a grand documentary imaging tradition, which in its most flourishing years had a broad social support. A fertile soil, which stemmed from the awareness that subjects of mutual interest need a richer and more versatile idiom than the aesthetic rhetoric of publicity.
When we worry about the narrowing of visual languages and ‘the corporate take-over of public expression’ as Herbert Schiller puts it, we will have to look more critically to the circumstances in which we work. A more realistic understanding will lead to a usage of language that will take into account and renew forgotten parts of visual vocabularies.
Because of the situation in the media this is not only a badly needed challenge, but also very possible.
R: Although this publication is dealing with the last decade, I feel that we both think that a lot has changed during the sixties. Do you agree?
JvT: How do you mean?
R: Changes not just in ‘formal’ education, the education with rules about what is allowed and what is not, but I think that at that time there was also a change in the appreciation of photography: we looked at it with much more attention. And what about political meaning, because that has always been very important to you?
JvT: For many designers, photographers, artists and others, the political factor is in politics as subject or political action. For me this is far too short-sighted, a far too narrow vision on the political meaning of artistic or intellectual work. Everything you produce has just like any other human activity political aspects, especially when it is a public activity.
Often, I compare a designer with an actor or a musician. A ‘text’ of a play or piece of music can only come to life with an intriguing interpretation. It is always more than the objectivity of words or notes and it is the same with a photographic or graphic image. In my opinion a classical or conventional interpretation is less interesting than a contrary or progressive interpretation, but both are political. It is important of course on what level you break through existing standards. Furthermore, except content and form there is of course the relation to the viewer, which determines how conservative or radical you are as producer from a political point of view.
R: (while making notes on this interview, he sketches a triangle) There is a photographer, who makes a photograph of a person and there is a person who looks at this photograph. These three people are connected by the same event. When I make your portrait, I do this in a way that reflects how I see you. Then there are my camera and films. I can make a lot of alterations with that. Than there is your opinion, shall I take my glasses off, do I look older, younger, better. And than there is this third person who is of the opinion that Robert has taken a lousy photograph of Jan van Toorn, because this is not how he is at all. A designer says: “I want to take this out of this photograph and make the black more black because that gives more drama” and he crops a picture differently as well. So an awful lot is happening there. Photographers should, but I don’t want to sit on your chair, be much more aware of the possibilities.
JvT: My triangle is a little different and stems from linguistics. The photographic image is so very special because it seems to be equal to what we observe. Roland Barthes calls this a realistic level, which is an analogue to reality, and therefore denotation. At the same instant the image is also connotation, signification by interpretation. Something that happens because of all possible forms of manipulation, which take place consciously or unconsciously at both levels.
The language of photography seems independent, but it has a long tradition. Centuries of art preceded, and lets not forget theatre, later cinema, television, etc. Also literature, scientific knowledge and philosophy have a great influence, just as social circumstances, technology and so on. The things you recognise in a photographic image, those which you share with others, are elements of denotation as well as elements of connotation. But how you use these shared conventions of the photographic language is what makes it really interesting. Manipulation is hard to deny as it has been in the design world for a very long time, just as with the photographers of New Realism for instance, who pursued objectivity as strictly as possible. Next to this exists an artistic tradition appealing more to a subversive, subjective intercourse with conventions about style and contents. That changed in the late fifties, beginning of the sixties. Then again it became clear that the tension between the two elements, realistic imitation and conscious artificiality, is important to escape the illusions of the accepted, classical representation. It will be difficult to find any remains of that in the media now. The rise of mass-media and mass consumption in the sixties caused a visual language that developed first of all sideways. Meaning, it caused a large variety of fascinating, largely decorative dialects. Reference and interpretation remain restricted to a constant renewal of style.
R: And a part of all this is who you are and where you come from. What are your roots and what kind of training did you get? Could you say something more about education?
My training for instance was solely about films, light and cameras. Education abroad, for instance in America is quite different, is it not? JvT: Not as a general rule, but you could say that in art education in English speaking countries there is more emphasis on transferring skills and knowledge of visual traditions. There is an education in theory and practise, which extends from cultural studies and communication studies to vocational training and knowledge and experience with technology. Education in The Netherlands is much less rooted in a broader cultural framework, is hardly critical and didactically underdeveloped. It is first of all aimed at the development of mentality of the individual student. How this mentality is expressed and what a visual grammar could be more than usual are in most cases left to coincidence. The same applies to editorial methodology and dealing with public.
R: And why is that not the same in The Netherlands?
JvT: Our art schools have a pragmatic and aesthetic background. In The Netherlands a programmatic approach is rare. And it didn’t get any better after twenty years of retrenchment. We tried a different approach at the Rietveld Academy. And that was reasonably successful, but it is a pity it didn’t get any further than a prolonged incident. At that time I was appointed by Charles Jongejans and Tom de Heus with a brief called ‘direction and planning’. I learned an awful lot there; tried to accomplish together with my students that what I had so dearly missed in my own education: how to design with a more journalistic approach of visual communication. Of course, without forgetting what we already accomplished.
R: Can you tell something about the symposium ‘Design beyond design’ in Maastricht?
JvT: The Jan van Eyk Academy is a post-graduate workshop for art, design and theory. Until now, these three disciplines formed a part of mutual activities, trying to offer participants practical and theoretical starting points. To make this all possible a set up had been chosen which combined the practical work of the individual participant with a debate about social, intellectual and historic conditions for visual production. Because of all this a symposium was organised annually, which in 1997 was devoted to ‘critical thinking and the practise of visual communication’. We wanted to start a dialogue about concrete possibilities for a design culture critically opposed to a capitalistic media society. Reason for this was that the monopolies of the culture- and media-industry have created a public sphere by increased commercialisation and consolidation, leaving no space for discussions about social, ecological and other consequences of neo liberal revolution.
R: I would like to take a little step back. At the beginning of the nineties all of a sudden we became very much aware of other cultures. We had to, because we came into a much more direct contact with people from other cultures. They come here and we go there and it is much easier to travel. The world is smaller and it is much easier to communicate. With CNN you just look inside a war, you sit at the same table with people who are fighting. Could it be that we are getting tired of all this watching. We are getting so much on our plate, this whole culture of ‘zapping’, you can’t see the wood for the trees.
JvT: My story is that we see the world through the eyes of the media. That it has almost become impossible to back out from this neo liberal belief which is preached there. You have to relate to it all, like it or not. As image makers we adapted ideologically, also because we depend on it. We thank our success, just like all other brokers in media, to the economical and technological development stimulated by government and industry. That has everything to do with our organisation expertise, but even more with the visual stimuli we produce for the market of goods and ideas. An activity which is also responsible for the mental integration of the consumer in the regulating mechanisms of the ‘free market’.
R: That is the problem, is there a solution?
JvT: Yes, we live in a transition period, so our perspective may not be as clear as we would like. Therefore it is most inspiring to see how in all kinds of disciplines, from sociology to cinema, from communication studies to literature and art, efforts are being made to look beyond the stereotypes of daily practise. All this with the purpose of getting a clear view by independent research on the conditions and criteria situated outside the view of the profession. A fine example is ‘Project on the city’ by Rem Koolhaas and his students at Harvard in the recently published book ‘Mutations’. It is an inquiry into a number of matters related to urban condition. The project bears no direct relationship to design. It is a genuine research project to get insight in certain pertinent, unusual or unknown conditions of urban mutations. In this research an enormous amount of astonishing facts and connections become visible supplemented with all kinds of visual material, among them photo-essays. It is amazing to experience how the material in this report is forcing you –also by looking- to radically reconsider your ideas about the city and urban development. The individual pictures and series no longer impress as images in themselves, but tell a story which will change your view on the city and the world for ever.
Differently, but comparable as a method is the work of Bertien van Manen. Photographs of her travels to Russia were on view last year in Rotterdam at the Biënnale. She also has a way of working which liberates thinking from the glass-bell of neo liberal dogma’s and preconceived ideas about photography. And that is not just because of her choice of a simple camera. Before anything else she has a relation of trust with the people she photographs. Her images show an involvement which prevent a photographer from running into banalities. It is an actualisation of the documentary as a combination of perception and reportage, made by a modest and affected person who transforms looking in a lasting experience.
R: All that matters is content?
JvT: There is no content without form. The photography in these two examples is excellent, but what is remarkable is that they are driven by considerations of content and not firstly by formal ones.
R: A lot has happened to us in the last ten years. A designer is also a photographer, interface designer, web artist, businessman etc. It is not just a person who is only making things, it is also someone who sits on a lot of chairs and the same applies to a photographer. It is first of al an economic interest. The client is better off, and presumes that it all has become more simple with the advent of the computer.
R: The client, does he have to be educated?
JvT: The new media suggest that you can do it all on your own. Practically those systems enable you to make a mountain of work logistically manageable with the help of design and make it look attractive. But when editorial and considerations about content count more than functionality, it is not any different from the old media. Than it is about a co-operation of several disciplines on a basis of a program and each party contributes in the framework of a mutual agenda. That is a division of labour as you see with motion pictures, television and thematic exhibitions, where various disciplines put in their specific quality to tell the story.
Division of labour aimed at efficiency isn’t bothered by that. A designer or photographer as visual director is unimaginable without a broader social engagement as a foundation for choices in contents and strategy. The same applies to clients. I just wish there were more.
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