Fireground Residency
An Introduction
Dust - So often it is perceived as nothing more than a general nuisance. In relation to photography, it is viewed in a similar light, an undesirable element which accumulates annoyingly on or around a lens, or gathers on a negative. It will typically be wiped or blown away, whereupon it is immediately forgotten about; until it's inevitable return.
In the domestic atmosphere, dust settles on windowsills, tables, shelves - any imaginable surface -where it is, again, swept away in a repetitive attempt to discard the very traces of our own existence.
Despite our efforts to disregard and avoid dust, we cannot escape its all-encompassing omnipresence. As it invades our homes and personal spaces, it obtains fragments of our being over time.
Photography is omnipresent too, particularly since the technological revolution. However, unlike dust, photography is a highly accessible, celebrated and loved medium.
Photography and dust represent time itself, they accumulate in high volumes every day, and offer evidence of life and death. Both tell a story. However, despite these similarities, we only hold onto and
cherish one as beloved mementoes. Dust is viewed as the undesirable other, floating in the background,
which we all endeavour to rid ourselves of.
How can this contrasting relationship of our repulsion towards dust paired with our attraction
towards photography be used in photographic-art practice, and what is the meaning of doing so?
This essay will explore our complex relationship with dust within contemporary photographic-art
practice, drawing on examples that create dialogue between the two. Although it has adverse
connotations, this essay will discuss how dust is a significant material to understand our origins -
celebrating the transience of life and serving as a reminder for death, whilst highlighting the
interconnectedness of our world with that of others.The first section will focus on the theme of the passage of time, and the accumulation of dust and
photography, analysing Man Ray’s ‘Dust Breeding’ as a starting point. This section will additionally re-think
the history of photography as a discourse of Ernst Chlandi’s ‘sound figures’ exploring the use of dust to fix
the instantaneous, whilst reinforcing how the surface is a significant factor of the process.
Section two utilises Michael Marder’s book ‘Dust’ to consider dust and photography as
communities of traces, with their purpose to confirm the existence of humanity. Furthermore, it will
analyse Eva Stenram’s ‘Per Pulverem Ad Astra’ to contemplate the objectivity of traces, creating distinctions
between digital and analogue mediums.
Finally, section three will refer to mortality as a key theme of both dust and photography;
interpreting Stephen McCoys 'Archaeology of the Carpet’ as a study of rituals and our inevitable return to
dust.
The Passage of Time
Marcel Duchamp, a French-American artist, constructed his piece ‘The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors,
Even (The Large Glass)’ between 1915-1923. The two glass panels, standing at a height of 2.7m, inhabit an
ambiguous composition, constructed by lead foil and wire. Depicting a bride, and her nine bachelors,
interlocked in an abstraction of machinery, viewers extract a variety of meanings from Duchamp’s piece;
including those linking to eroticism, politics and technological advancements, including the mechanical
reproduction of the era (Włudzik, 2014).
It was because of Duchamp’s self-proclaimed laziness, and his back-and-forth, time-consuming
travel between France and America, that ‘The Large Glass’ took a staggering 8 years to finish.Figure. 1: Man Ray, Dust Breeding, 1920
During 1920, three years prior to completion, Duchamp was in Paris, and his piece had accumulated
a considerable amount of dust in his Manhattan studio. Man Ray, a good friend of Duchamp, was at the
time assigned by art collector Katherine S. Dreier to photograph other artists’ work. As part of this project,
Ray photographed the work in Duchamp’s studio (Campany, 2017). ‘The Large Glass’ sat peacefully, with a
years’ worth of dust gathered on its once transparent surface. It was a testament to Duchamp’s absence
and lack of attention paid to the piece.
However, it did manage to catch Ray’s attention, stating that the accumulation of dust adapted to
the contours of Duchamp’s work, it “appeared like some strange landscape from a bird’s-eye view”(Campany, 2017). Man Ray cropped the negative of the large glass to compose the image without the
distractions of other objects in Duchamp’s studio. The new composition comprised the dusty artwork, with
a white strip of the studio wall creating a horizon line that alludes to the outside world, concealing the fact
that he took the image in an indoor studio.
The initial title of the piece was therefore titled ‘View from An Airplane’, because of the
photograph’s resemblance to an aerial landscape, an abundance of dust falling on the Earth’s surface
resembled the same aesthetic qualities that appeared in aerial warfare images of the same era. He opened
the shutter, and one-hour exposure followed, as an unconscious collaboration that gained the title of ‘Dust
Breeding’ (Figure. 1) years later. When Duchamp returned to his studio, he kept a small trace of dust in the
corner which he fixed into the glass to become a part of the work. He disturbed the rest of the dust, wiped
away from the surface of the glass, and floated through time and space, to accumulate again elsewhere
(Campany, 2017).
The significance of the surface allowed the gathering of dust, and the proposition for dusting, in the
same way that the image slowly accumulated onto the light-sensitive surface in Ray’s camera, with time
being the referent to achieve both instances.
The passage of time is a consistent and significant factor in relation to the accumulation of dust and
photographs. Dust is a combination of both living and inorganic entities snipped from the flow of time and
space, deriving from diverse sources to amass in evolving matter of the past; presented as a transitory
material in our reality.
The seemingly mundane material authorises our existence, as a “spatial testimony to the singular
journey of each being through time” (Marder, 2017:81), utilising our existence to explain its contents. Dust
inhabits surfaces over time, and the longer it is left undisturbed, the greater the mass of accumulation is.
We can make a comparison from Man Ray’s hour-long exposure to the accumulation of dust on the surfaceof Duchamp’s work; a greater exposure time allows a higher value of light to enter his camera, granting
more information to be embedded onto the film.
‘Dust Breeding’ sets the scene for exploring the relationship between dust and photography in
contemporary art-practice, but the link begins much earlier than Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp’s
collaboration. We can celebrate dust as one material responsible for the birth of photography. By
rethinking the origin of photography as an outcome of early mark-making on sensitized surfaces; we can
begin to understand its origin deriving from a set of experimentations that fulfilled the desire to fix the
transience of events to a static and spatial pattern (Ramalingam, 2010: 5-6).
It was in the late 18th century that German natural philosophers began to use dust as the medium
of naturally fixing instantaneous events, firstly turning sound into sight through dusts temporal and spatial
properties. Ernst Chladni’s ‘sound figures’ (Figure. 2), made in 1785, were the first examples of transforming
the movement of acoustic vibrations into visual imagery (Ramalingam, 2010:5). The impermanent nature of
the dust was responsible for the distinct patterns formed on the surfaces, representing individual sounds.
Figure. 2: Ernst Chlandi, Sound Figures, 1785It was the application of fixing the durational and instantaneous that became key to the success of
photography. The experiments exercised by philosophers such as Chladni later propelled the motivation of
pioneer William Fox Talbot to make his first photograph (Ramalingam, 2010). The camera obscura already
existed, producing a copy of what the eyes saw, as the first “mechanical system of reproduction” (Bazin,
1960:6). However, because the process consisted of a direct moving scene projected into a three-
dimensional space, reality was not captured, but existed how the eyes saw it (Bazin, 1960). Artists of the
time would trace the projection to copy the scene as a still entity, but the lack of sensitive materials
hindered fixing the exact event. It became clear from Chladni’s ‘sound figures’, that to fix the camera
obscura, Talbot would have to follow the same steps of experimentation through capturing the
instantaneous on a sensitive surface. Instead of capturing the visualisation of sounds through dust, the plan
was to visualise reality through using light to fix the instantaneous event from the passage of time. Talbots
first success was in 1951, as he captured movement in a crisp state, unlike earlier attempts that did not
abide to photographic representation. It was recognised that the use of Amphetype plates were
responsible for the fixing of the image, as the traces of light that entered his camera fixed the movement
onto them (Ramalingam, 2010:19).
To note photography as a continuity of such processes signifies time as a key characteristic to
photographic-art practice. John Berger, in ‘Understanding a Photograph’ noted that “the photograph is an
automatic record through the mediation of light of a given event: yet it uses the given event to explain its
recording” (Berger, 2013:19). Dust is too an automatic record of events, from creating patterns in ‘sound
figures’ to the recording of daily occurrences through light and vision, such as; the shedding of our skin, the
falling out of our hair, or the construction of a building. Dust exists as traces of our life, and our death,
flowing through the air as specks, and silhouetted by the sun; its contents explains its existence, confirming
the evidence that “there is something rather than nothing–or, at least, that there was something” (Marder,
2016:35) both dust and photography therefore bring the past into the present. The same moment that thephotographer laid their eyes upon, and decided it was a moment worth capturing, now exists as a material
object; the luminance of the moment now supply a surface for the spectator’s gaze to touch. Although the
referent may be fabricated through the control of the taker, the photograph is visual proof of what has
been; superimposing of both reality and of the past (Barthes, 1960:76). The fusion between reality and the
past that the camera imposes, enables the absence of the past to become relevant to the present observer
(McQuire, 1998:109).
The purpose of photography was not only to create imprints and marks but also provides “the
illusion of direct seeing” (Ramalingam, 2010:21) by capturing individual events that are unrepeatable. In
both instances of Chladni’s ‘sound figures’ and Man Ray’s ‘Dust Breeding’, the surface is key to transforming
sound and light into visual imagery, through the mediation of time reinforced by the fact that; “any image
drawn by nature is always drawn through time” (Ramalingam, 2010:21). It is also within nature that the two
materials interlink, with the elements of both alluding to the outside world, something that will be
addressed more in the next section.
Traces of Existence
‘Dust’ by Michael Marder, part of the Bloomsbury series, explores the obscurity of ordinary objects
and is a key reference in this essay (2016). By discussing the mundane material from multiple viewpoints,
the book unintentionally creates distinctions of the characteristics of dust that can also be assigned to the
medium of Photography. In the acceptance that we cannot escape it, Marder often speaks of dust as a
portal into understanding existence; through looking at dust in a way that examines the traces of humanity
in relation to the physicality of the universe.In the introduction alone, Marder draws on dust as a community of remnants, as “a random
community of what has been and what is yet to be” (Marder, 2016:xi) a distinction also made by Barthes,
describing the photograph as “the intractable“ relating to its condition of being deferred in the present
(Barthes,1982:77). Likewise, Vilem Flusser, in ‘A Philosophy of Photography’ speaks of the universe of
photographs in a sense that also simultaneously describes the existence of dust. He states that “the
photographic universe is made up of such little pieces” (Flusser, 2010:67) which are constantly being
replaced resulting in a world where “we no longer take any notice of most photographs” (Flusser, 2010:65).
Although we do take in the meanings of photographs, the world is saturated by their presence which
reduces their rarity value to the same as dust. The omnipresence of both mediums emits altering
connotations, but both are ultimately redundant in the universe– it is difficult to imagine a world without
either entity. The quantum character of the photographic universe; the little pieces that create a global
mass of images into our everyday lives replicates that of the particles of dust, which act as a course for the
constant replacement and circulation of redundant traces, offering two altering but visual perceptions of
reality.
This sense of community applies to collections of photographs, an example to draw from is the
photo-archive. As well as gaining information on the past, archival collections point to the future
(Steedman, 2001), making ourselves an outcome of the mediations between the self and the photographic
traces we scrutinize. The photograph asserts the “certificate of presence” (Barthes, 1982:87),
authenticating the subject’s existence at that time, yet as much as it is visual evidence, it is a way of seeing
that stems from the individual personality and choices of the photographer. By placing oneself as the
reference to snapshots, we gain an understanding of the world through visual and semiotic code, creating
meanings from relations or context. Instead of choosing which moments to capture, dust disregards what
should be or shouldn’t be collected into its community - creating a material that becomes ambiguous yet
more reliable and valid than photography.Figure.3: Eva Stenram, Per Pulverem Ad Astra, 2007
Dust and the photographic negative are both characterised as the catalogue of traces Marder
discusses. Both exist as a collaborative material archive derived from Earth, and other planets,
accumulating to construct our ideal of reality. The combination of photographic archives with communities
of dust is present in the work of Eva Stenram. In ‘Per Pulverem Ad Astra’ (Figure. 3) Stenram produces
physical negatives from NASA’s digital image archive and left in the rooms of Stenram’s domestic space to
sit and collect dust (Stenram, 2019), essentially accumulating the traces of her existence. The images depict
an orange-toned Mars, a source of fascination for many, while white silhouettes of household dust are
overlaid onto its alien scenery; substituting the household dust for the lack of human settlement. The
accumulation of dust from Stenram’s domestic space gathered on top of a Martian landscape therefore
creates an interconnectedness of two planetary bodies through the coexistence of redundant traces. As
demonstrated in the 1885 January issue of the British Journal of Photography, dust is initially described as a
“unpleasant substance” but one that “represents the exploded debris, and scattered fragments of other
planetary bodies, which are continually falling upon earth” (39). This reinforces the spatial and temporalrelations between our own world, and that of others, through the mutual flow of cosmic dust and
photographs taken in space. The rocky terrain hints at the presence of atmospheric dust, creating an
alikeness between the familiarity of the domestic space, and the aloofness of a foreign land; incorporating
the man-made with the natural, human-free landscape. A mediation of two planetary bodies becomes a
mediation between two materials; the dust and the photograph. Instead of being removed from the
negative, the dust collects and gathers without disruption, settling on its surface in the same way as the
dust falls upon Earth. ‘Per Pulverem Ad Astra’ is a collection of traces from the universe on a mechanically
produced trace. The dust is a catalog, or an archive, like that of NASA’s; one that records the past whilst
pointing to the future (Steedman, 2001:7).
‘Per Pulverem Ad Astra’ also creates conversation around the materiality of the photographic object
and its relationship to objectivity. Stenram’s desire to translate the digital back to the analogue, asserts
materiality as a significant feature of the photography's truthfulness, reinforced by the fact that “memory is
refracted through the photographer's materiality” (Edwards, 2009:332). The physicality of the negative
replaces Mars, and creates the surface of proximity that digital images lack, for the snippets of Stenram’s
material existence (over time) to inhabit, constructing the nexus of the image. The photograph is a two-
dimensional object that one “cannot penetrate, cannot reach into” (Barthes, 1982:106), its flatness creates
a surface that is so sure of itself, that we cannot begin to doubt its truthfulness. This flatness and
materiality are individual characteristics of analogue photography that differentiates it from digital images.
Symbolic of the technological advancements of our era, the digital image lacks physical
engagement, and “the virtualization of existence instills in us the illusion of a dust-free world” (Marder,
2016:69). Taken by a science rover, the photographs travel from Mars to Earth through electromagnetic
radiation, existing as digital data that will be decoded on an array of data platforms (Seppänen, 2017).
Indeed, the digital archive possesses the same transient characteristics that the accumulation of dust does;
with photographs being taken, circulated, and distributed from an array of sources to create a collection(Jerslevand Mortesen, 2014:157) communicating the “here” and “now” in multiple places simultaneously
(Villi, 29) but the digital archive is not of physical traces; but of binary code. The function of photography
by NASA is to create “a substitute for the real” (Burbridge, 2019), establishing the previously unknown
experiences of other planets through the dependency of photography’s objective nature. Confirming that
their images are digital, their lack of materiality actually interferes with their objectivity, hinting that the
addition of dust in Stenram’s work asserts the ‘substitute for the real’ that the digital archive may lack.
Online accessibility of the archive also leads to digital files becoming vulnerable to unauthorized
distribution and manipulation, altering the power of the medium’s objectivity; with this differentiating the
digital from dust and the analogue image. Accordingly, as dust is a naturally occurring entity; it is a sensible
claim, that nothing is more real than the raw, tiny particles of our own world. Ultimately, using dust as a
material in contemporary art practice becomes a better approach of employing the photographic object as
a medium for objectivity. Dust is not a representation of us or the world, but stands as the factual
fragments that validate existence and consequently, nothing more than itself can replace its credibility.
Mortality
Both dust and photography are mediums that unconsciously refer to mortality, through acting as
the grammar of our existence. Michael Marder states that “as dust gathers, parts of us are gathered into it,
until, one day, the entire body is claimed” (2016:67). Reinforcing the desire for finite existence, Marder
draws on the belief that we return to dust after death, defined in the English Burial Service; “for dust thou
art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (Genesis 3:19). Over our lifetimes, we are contributing to the
accumulation of dust, and when we are dead, our bodies transform into the dust we repetitively try to
discard in our waking lives (creating irony in our distaste towards it). We instead make the conscious
decision to keep a documentation of our lives through images, accumulating a community of evidence thatasserts our existence. When we are deceased, the photographic records’ function as memory, acting as a
substitute for the physical appearance of the body in the world. Andre Bazin reinforces this in ‘The
Ontology of The Photographic Image’, stating that plastic arts always refer back to the dead; noting how the
process of “embalming the dead might turn out to be a fundamental factor in their creation” (1960:4).
Bazin also verifies the desire for a finite existence by drawing on the human devotion set to preserve the
dead. Throughout the history of art, a set of processes including mummification, sculptures, and the
cenotaph, have all been commonly created in art practice and every-day life to imply the everlasting (Bazin,
1960:5). Photography is a post-industrial technique of achieving this same trope; by freeing subjects from
the harshness of time and preserving them against mortality. It is this dialogue that a photograph emits,
paired with its material and presentational forms, that are core to “it’s function as a socially salient object”
(Edwards, 2009:332). It is this idea of the photography substituting absence that makes it a significant art-
form regarding mortality; naturally our memory and traces are remembered and preserved through
photographs, whilst our bodies return to dust.
Figure. 4: Stephen McCoy, Archaelogy of a Carpet, 2015In Figure 4. Stephen McCoy’s ‘Archaeology of a Carpet’ can be interpreted as an exploration of this
phenomenon; the fact we are made from and return to dust. Photography attempts to disregard the bodies
return to dust, and instead views the subject how they were, to preserve their life rather than infatuating
over their death. However, the photographic image inevitably points to the death of the subject as it
repeats “what could never be repeated existentially” (Barthes, 1982:4), it is undeniable that the subject or
event captured has passed. McCoy’s work goes against this grain of tradition, and utilises photography to
represent the death of himself by documenting the dust collected in his vacuum cleaner, as recognisable
objects amongst the debris point to the material lifestyle of the photographer. We can view the
photographs as self-portraits, reinforced by the diary style A5 book format the images are published into.
He captures the communities of his past, and fixes them in the present, to create a series of images that
quintessentially stand for the outcome of his living. The images are photographed with a macro lens,
allowing the dust to inhabit the entirety of the frame setting a reminder of the omni-presence of dust
within our world, and transforms the domestic dust into an abstract landscape, creating associations with
the genre of landscape photography, recognised again in ‘Dust Breeding’.
The photographs of dust are a contact between two commonly performed rituals; photographing
and dusting. The act of dusting attempts to “erase proofs of our mortality” (Marder, 2016:6), as the dust
invades our desire to keep the domestic environment sterile and pristine. The dusted surface is restored to
the realism expectation imposed on the household, allowing us to share a direct gaze with objects and
surfaces, without the obstruction of the interfering dust (Marder, 2016:15). Confining the dust into a
vacuum cleaner as it's temporary storage system creates a delay until the dust is redistributed through
space and time. McCoy’s act of photographing the outcome of dusting is conflicting, but proves again that
“there is something rather than nothing” (Marder, 2016:35); reinforcing the significance of dust to reassure
our existence, and the significance of photography to document it as a fixed state. Naturally, the ritual ofphotography claims “a desire for memory and the act of keeping a photograph is, like other souvenirs, an
act of faith in the future” (Edwards, 2009:332).
Using photography to visualise dust fixes this transient material into something more tangible and
turns it into a possession of desire; transforming dust into a socially salient object through photography.
Ultimately, if dusting is employed to remove evidence of our mortality, McCoy’s act of photographing the
dusted-up-dust in fact achieves the opposite of dusting, creating a paradoxical stance between the two
mediums. Stephen McCoy’s work is therefore a celebration of dust's fatality, preserved as a fixed trace
through the stillness of photography.
Ultimately, the rituals of dusting and photography create a contrary statement of removing proofs
of existence, whilst preserving them, both exercised in obsessive manners. We can conclude that there are
more similarities present in the acts of dusting and digitalization; as both exercises promote a sterile
environment by eradicating the physical traces of our own existence, confirming our desire for a dust free
world (Marder, 2016:69).
Conclusion
Our preoccupation and obsessions with the photographic universe have perhaps hindered our
curiosity regarding the universe of dust, seeing it as not much more than a mere inconvenience. But it is
when dust is employed with photography that a certain magic happens; a mundane material transforms
into a metaphor for life, death, and even the ontology of the photographic medium itself. There is no doubt
that the addition of dust in photographic-art practice creates distinct and original artworks that highlights
the essence of existence, the augmentation of time, and eases the reminder of mortality. When
collaboratively utilised, the artwork can become paradoxical because of the contradictory attitudes andcultural expectations towards both mediums, but ultimately, when discussing either dust or photography,
the conversation tends to naturally negate the attributes of the other.
This essay has distinguished two main processes of combining dust and photography. In the first
process, the photograph acts as a natural surface for the dust to fall onto, replicating the natural movement
and settlement of dust particles. This method is present in Figure.3 (Stenram, 2007) and celebrates the
differentiating qualities of the mediums (of moving and fixed traces), whilst reinforcing the surface’s
significance regarding accumulation. Eva Stenram’s body of work also utilises dust as not only a connection
between two planets but as a metaphor for the changing face of photography, through her conscious
decision to translate the digital image back to analogue, signifying materiality to be central to photographic
realism and objectivity. A photographer obsessed with realism may therefore use dust as a material as a
more compelling and credible source of truth than the photograph, by appropriating the literal and physical
traces of human existence.
The second process is utilised by Stephen McCoy in ‘The Archaeology of a Carpet’ (Figure. 4) and
consists of photographing dust, in order to fix its transitory state into a still object and reduce dust’s
distasteful qualities to a flat surface; creating a more opaque and convenient mode of studying its
appearance. David Campany states that “once photographed, dust becomes noticeable and meaningful”
(2017:23) we can see it all for what it is, allowing a better description than the literary definition of dust
itself. There is no desire to keep dust as a possession, but an image of dust is contrary, as we can mediate
the material through a trace of light, rather than dealing with its unpleasantly perceived form.
Photographing dust provides the illusion that the ungoverned material is under control, drawing observers
to grasp the recognisable element of everyday life into a new state of preservation and evidence.
Ultimately, we are more enticed by photograph of dust, than by the actual dust itself, as it is placed within
the security and stability of the frame, fixed on a surface, and not in transit; it is not the real dust we wishto quickly disregard; but represents dust in a way that its undesirable qualities are resolved to a two-
dimensional object.
Man Ray’s ‘Dust Breeding’ (Figure. 1) sits between the two, as he photographs the dust settled on
Marcel Duchamp’s sculpture. The passage of time is marked by the accumulation of matter on Duchamp’s
work, deriving from the absence of the artist. Using dust in photographic-art practice is therefore creating a
process dedicated to time and employing the redundant traces of life as an art material in itself. It is
pragmatic to contemplate both mediums in relation to one another through philosophical and conceptual
viewpoints, to better understand how our world, and investigate how our individual selves are constructed
by the reality effect of both. In the end, dust and photography are the two materials that we will
simultaneously become and be remembered by after our passing.Bibliography
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Illustrations
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