The (De)Construction of National Photography in Minor Photographies: The Case of Marcel Mariën

Abstract

This article explores the relation between photography and the nation, taking the Belgian context as a starting point. Belgian photographies, as defined in this essay, have been repeatedly described as exempt from schools, centres, towering figures, or strong institutions. Due to this absence of positive identity, it is impossible to approach Belgian photographies from an essentialist perspective. This essay argues that new methodological questions, which generally address photography in its multiplicity and its context sensitiveness, are needed for the specific study of Belgian photographies. The authors develop such a new set of questions by proposing to transfer the notion of ‘minor literature’, as theorised by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, to the study of photography. They end with a close reading of two images by Marcel Mariën, which they consider a case of minor photography in Belgium in the 1950s.

Keywords:

• national photography
• minor photography
• Belgium
• Surrealism
• Marcel Mariën (1920–1993)

Notes

1 – See also in this regard Jan Baetens, Mieke Bleyen and Hilde Van Gelder, ‘Y-a-t-il une photographie “belge”?’, Contemporary French Civilization, 33:1 (2009), 157–78.

2 – See, for instance, Georges Vercheval et al., Pour une histoire de la photographie en Belgique: Essais critiques – répertoire des photographes depuis 1839, Charleroi: Musée de la photographie 1993; Pool Andries et al., Belgische fotografen 1840–2005, Antwerp: FotoMuseum Provincie Antwerpen 2005; or the publication produced on the occasion of an exhibition of the same title held at the University of Brighton Gallery, 4 April–May 14 2008, by David Green et al., The Unwanted Self: Contemporary Photography from the Low Countries, Antwerpen: FotoMuseum Provincie Antwerp 2008.

3 – Vercheval et al., Pour une histoire de la photographie, 10 (authors' translation).

4 – Tim Edinsor, National Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life, London: Berg 2002, 35.

5 – Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, London: Verso 1983.

6 – Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism, London: Sage 1995.

7 – Piotr Piotrewski, ‘Toward a Horizontal History of the European Avant-Garde’, in Europa! Europa? The Avant-Garde, Modernism and the Fate of a Continent, ed. Sacha Bru et al., Berlin: De Gruyter 2009, 50 and 54–5.

8 – Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Toward a Geography of Art, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press 2004.

9 – Susan Stanford Friedman, ‘Periodizing Modernism: Postcolonial Modernities and the Space/Time Borders of Modernist Studies’, Modernism/Modernity, 13:3 (2006), 426.

10 – Blake Stimson, The Pivot of the World. Photography and Its Nation, Cambridge and London: MIT Press 2006, 7.

11 – See, for instance, Katherine Hoffman (ed.), ‘The Family of Man: An Introduction’, History of Photography, 29:4 (2005), 317–19. See also François Brunet's essay in this issue: François Brunet, 'Nationalities and Universalism in the Early Historiography of Photography (1843–1857)', History of Photography, 35:2 (2011), 98–110.

12 – Dirk De Geest and Reine Meylaerts (eds), ‘Littératures en Belgique/Literaturen in België. Un problème, une problématique, un programme’, in Littératures en Belgique/ Litteraturen in België. Diversités culturelles et dynamiques littéraires/Culturele diversiteit en literaire dynamiek, Nouvelle poétique comparatiste 13, Brussels: P.I.E. – Peter Lang 2004, 28–30.

13 – Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Kafka. Towards a Minor Literature. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2007 (1st French edition 1975). Our reading of Deleuze and Guattari's philosophy of art is particularly indebted to the writing of: Ronald Bogue, Deleuze's Way. Essays in Transverse Ethics and Aesthetics, Aldershot: Ashgate 2007; Simon O'Sullivan, Art Encounters Deleuze and Guattari: Thought Beyond Representation, Renewing Philosophy, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2006; and Anne Sauvagnargues, Deleuze et l'art, Lignes d'art, Paris: PUF 2005.

14 – Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia, London and New York: Continuum 2004, 345 (1st French edition 1980).

15 – Russell West-Pavlov, Space in Theory. Kristeva, Foucault, Deleuze, Spatial Practices 7, Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi 2009, 193.

16 – Reidar A. Due, Deleuze, Key Contemporary Thinkers, Cambridge and Malden: Polity Press 2007, 74.

17 – See, for instance, Alison Butler, Women's Cinema. The Contested Screen, Short Cuts, London: Wallflower Press 2002; Rosi Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory, New York: Columbia University Press 1994; and Françoise Lionnet and Shu-Mei Shih (eds), Minor Transnationalism, Durham: Duke University Press 2005.

18 – Les Lèvres Nues. Collection complète (1954–1958), Paris: Plasma 1978.

19 – In this regard, the research by Xavier Canonne, specialist in Surrealism in Belgium and currently director of the Charleroi Museum of Photography, has been of major importance. See, for instance, the presence of Mariën in Le Surréalisme en Belgique 1924–2000, Brussels: Fonds Mercator 2007; or the exhibition and catalogue devoted to Mariën in 1993/94: Xavier Canonne, Marcel Mariën, Monographies de l'art moderne, Brussels: Crédit Communal 1994.

20 – This idea was elaborated by Mieke Bleyen in an unpublished paper at an IAWIS focus conference entitled ‘Displaying Word and Image’ on 5 June in Belfast: From the Public Forum to the Private Living Room. Marcel Mariën's Logic of (non)Display.

21 – Marcel Mariën, Le Radeau de la mémoire: Souvenirs déterminés, Paris: Pré aux Clercs 1983.

22 – ‘Le Pas du commandeur’, Les Lèvres Nues, 5 (June 1955), 10–21.

23 – Since the Port of Antwerp was the only North Sea port coming relatively unharmed out of the German occupation, it became of crucial importance to the Allied Forces. Hence, the Antwerp dockers were considered war heroes because of their persistence in loading and unloading under difficult circumstances and the daily fear of flying bombs. See Karel Van Isacker S.J., Afscheid van de havenarbeider 1944–1966, Antwerpen: De Nederlandse Boekhandel 1967.

24 – Les Lèvres Nues, 2.

25 – Ibid., 10 (author's translation).

26 – Ibid., 12.

27 – Ibid., 11.

28 – Ibid., 19.

29 – Cf. H. Van Gelder (ed.), ‘“Social Realism” Then and Now. Constantin Meunier and Allan Sekula’, in Constantin Meunier. A Dialogue with Allan Sekula, Leuven: University Press Leuven 2005, 71–91.

30 – Les Lèvres Nues, 2.

31 – Paul Nougé, Histoire de ne pas rire, Brussels: Les Lèvres Nues 1956. The notion of ‘disturbing object’ is an explicit critique of the (French) Surrealist notion of the objet trouvé, which lacks, according to Nougé, ideological and political sharpness: found objects reveal and perpetuate an aesthetic stance towards the world; disturbing objects help construct ‘situations’ (as one knows, there is a direct line from Belgian Surrealism to Situationism) capable of provoking political agitation (if not agency).

32 – Van Isacker S.J., Afscheid van de havenarbeider, 13–17 and 139–47.

33 – ‘J'aimerais assez, que ceux d'entre nous dont le nom commence à marquer un peu, l'effacent. Ils y gagneraient une liberté dont on peut encore espérer beaucoup’ (Nougé, Histoire de ne pas rire, 79).

34 – John Roberts, The Intangibilities of Form. Skill and Deskilling in Art after the Readymade, London: Verso 2007.