KZNSA Social Art Blog: The more you know the more you see: Cedric Nunn

Photo Credit: Simanga Zondo (DCP member)

This is a Visual Literacy learning module compiled by Durban Centre for Photography (DCP) and osmosisliza, using Cedric Nunn's exhibition “Unsettled: One Hundred Years War of Resistance by Xhosa Against Boer and British” as a case study. This blog post is aimed at improving your skills for reading a photograph (decode), so that you better understand how to make (encode) a photograph.

click here to read about the DCP's mentoring approach

In this Visual Literacy module we will use 6 of Cedric Nunn's (CN) photographs for your Visual Literacy exercises, guided through 3 steps.

How do you look, see, regard and imagine?

STEP 1: Your subjective response

Take time and look these photographs carefully subjectivly. Read the title of the exhibition again (a clue). To start analyzing, describing and interpreting, it is important that you draw from your own personal perspective and cultural framework of knowledge. This is what we call a subjective response. Draw from your own reference points, your belief system and answer the following questions:

What does what you see in the photograph mean to you?

What emotions or memories are provoked?

Where are your eyes drawn in this photograph? What stands out? Why?

What in the photograph leads you to say this?

Why was this photograph created? 

Photograph 1:

Photograph 2:

Photograph 3:

Photograph 4:

Photograph 5:

Photograph 6:

How does the photographer look, see, regard and imagine?

STEP 2: The context of photographer, place and photographic language

Now that you have identified visual elements and processed information with regards to your personal understanding and association with visual elements, we will try to add and change your reading of the photograph by informing you of the context of these photographs. We will tell you about the photographer’s intent and his personal reasons for making these photographs. We will also highlight certain photographic themes and language. Now you will look at the photographs again knowing more, from an informed perspective… remember the more you know the more you will see.

· Why did CN make these photographs?

· What is his message?

· What are his beliefs?

· What is his social intention?

· Why and how did he do research?

Click here to read Cedric Nunn's Artist Statement

CN says: “Through revisiting this painful past in the contemporary scenes of today, this work attempts to place the present in its factual context of dispossession and conquest.”

We met up with CN and chatted to him about his reasons behind this photo-essay. CN has read a lot of books and spoken to a variety of people about the “historical facts” of this “100 Year War”. His research took him 3 years. CN says that we as a human race have been organized to forget about this history – “we need to look back” and to understand society we need to do research. To understand a situation beyond its surface level, we need to expose shame. When CN spoke to people he recognized that a lot of people did not know about this war and that concerned him. He wanted to make this photo-essay to give the dispossessed (ejected, expelled, thown out, exiled) voice of the Xhosa nation a place to be heard – to rewrite and rememorize that which was silenced. CN believes that a countries history is just like a persons history and he wants to redirect knowledge through the person. He asks: “Why did something a large as this disappear from our consciousness?”

Photo Credit: Simanga Zondo

CN claims Artistic License by acknowledging that what he is presenting in his photo-story is his understanding of the story. He invites the viewer to use their imagination and contest his version. He says that he has taken an idea that has gripped him personally, and explores it visually. When CN made these photographs, he allowed an intuitive and instinctive response to guide his visual sight. He is very aware of the ethics and morals of telling a story that could be considered not his, but CN says that he owns that he is an artist and a curious person, and he finds personal growth and awareness in personal projects. These give meaning in his own life. CN said to us that "a good project is like a journey – it will take you on a trajectory and you will come out far more understanding than when you began".

CN uses landscapes as metaphors. He describes these landscapes as a “symbolic body” – standing for those human bodies who have been disposed (to get rid of, to discard, to do away with, destroy) because of land being desired and defended, occupied, desired, defended, lost and won.

CN wants you to gaze at the SA landscape to reconnect the present with its History. The physical sites visited by CN for this photo-essay are sites of trauma, missionary incursion sites, military fortification sites, settler incursion sites, white farmer sites, Xhosa tribal land, Xhosa leadership sites, Xhosa sacred sites, indigenous Khoikhoi sites, natural geographical borders during the conflict, natural defense geography and topology, massacre sites, current use of land sites, graves of significant characters (mostly Xhosa), sites of contemporary memory, prisons and battle sites. CN invites you to use your imagination when you look at these landscapes.

He writes about this in his artist statement:
“This essay looks at the land, which was occupied, desired, defended, lost and won. In it we see both the uses and states it is to be found in today, both by the victors and the vanquished. We are able to imagine the heroism and the misery it inflicted on its actors as they either defended or attacked. We see too, how little of this memory is commemorated or honoured. We see the smug vanquishers, and the vanquished. We see the continuing collaborations, which have always been necessary to maintain the status quo. We see the beauty, which stirred the souls of the inhabitants and the lust of the invaders”.

The photographs are silent and invite imagination. CN asks that the viewer not be persuaded by beauty but rather seek to find evidence and traces of a history. This open-endedness for interpretation, and invitation for imagination, becomes a social and political tool. It questions how and what the viewer knows about history. In these images CN invites you to consider the impact of the past on the present and negotiate the constructed landscape versus memory. CN sets up tensions between the notion of what is made “visible” infact talks about the “invisible”.

CN says that if “we can not really believe in ourselves, we can not seem not to take seriously who we are or once were”.

CN’s photographs are deadpan. Using a deadpan aesthetic generates questions that the viewer keeps in mind, and sets a tone for a non-biased relationship between the viewer and the subject matter, one that removes the photographer. This is an aesthetic used by photographers to show their indifference (lack of concern, interest, seemingly unimportant) to a subject and detach themselves from the subject. In these types of photographs the photographer looks at their subject straight on and places the subject in the centre. The photograph seems empty. There is no emotion.

• Think about why would CN uses this aesthetic for a project that has such personal and social relevance to him?

• Why does CN show these people or landscapes in such a mundane light?

CN’s photographs are about social action. CN wants to change what society thinks they know about themselves by offering another perspective of a society that was silenced. CN’s body of works could be described as being part of a movement in photography called “Aftermath photography”. This when committed artists tell the other half of the story of conflict — the story of what it takes for individuals to learn to live again, to rebuild destroyed lives and homes, to restore civil societies, to address the lingering wounds of conflict while struggling to create new avenues for peace.

CN writes (in Leica) that the “The need for social justice in the southern African region has never been greater than now. When the honeymoon period of the new regime ended and the promises made were clearly not going to become a reality, when the corruption set in…”

CN’ uses captions. Captions are informative text that sit below the image and give the photograph a context to allow the viewer to get a better understanding of how the contents in the photo relate to an event, a place, a person, a history or a incident. Most captions draw attention to something in the image that is not obvious, such as its relevance to the text. The caption for each photograph offers information we would not otherwise know from viewing the photograph.

Ask yourself:

• How do these new details impact the way you look at the photograph?
• How does the caption inform the photograph?

See links below:

http://ijnet.org/en/stories/writing-photo-captions

http://web.ku.edu/~edit/captions.html

How do you re-look, re-see, re-regard and re-imagine?

STEP 3: Re-think and re-visit what you know

You have been given more “clues” in step 2 to help you understand the context of the photograph and the photographers "eye". Now that you know more … will you see more?

Re-look at the photographs… re-think and re-visit...

Draw new conclusions, make more informed decisions, apply new knowledge to new situations. Focus now on what do you think the photographer wants you to see, regard and imagine now that you know more? DESCRIBE + ANALYSE + INTERPRET the photographs again through a set of new questions posed, that go beyond the collection of personal facts. Click on the links below to go to the documents in Google Drive.