Virginie Litzler

Lost and Found in All The Odd Places: Looking for the Photograph (extract)
by Matthew Bowman

[...] It would be tempting to say that Virginie Litzler produces photographs that insist upon their status as material objects and that she works in series. However, Litzler is largely resistant to the terms “object” and “serial” as descriptions of her artistic practice insofar as they are misidentifications of what she considers her photography to be. The category of the ‘object’, she notes, remains caught within subject/object dualisms which, as some philosophers would argue, is not resolved through appealing to a mutually constitutive interdependency between the two oppositions. Seriality, meanwhile, entails a logical, spatial, or temporal linearity—a ‘one thing after another,’ to use Donald Judd’s memorable remark—at odds with her artistic intentions. Yet the initial temptation retains some degree of value insofar as a fuller account diagnosing why the temptation lingers and why it misdirects us would arguably prove to be a productive method for critically approaching Litzler’s photographs. Such an account is not possible in this context, but inroads can be made in that direction nonetheless.

The materiality of Litzler’s photographs indicate why we might wish to speak of them as objects, though it would be an error to restrict our perception of that materiality to the edges and surfaces of each photograph. Indeed, to enact such a cognitive restriction leads to the very perception of objecthoodness that should be denied insofar as it’s theoretically insufficient. Instead, the photographs form explicit connections between themselves and their exhibition situation; their materiality, then, is the confluence of photograph, wall, floor, and even the beholder’s position in relation to all this and the other photographs exhibited. Litzler draws attention to this by placing photographs ajar from the wall, or through introducing near-sculptural elements into the display, or via other strategies. Her focus upon the human body, too, invites the beholder to consciously or unconsciously mimic the contortions of those depicted, effectively deploying themselves as mirrored parts of the photograph. Although the serial aspect of artistic practices typically derives from a preset thematic that’s continuously or discontinuously apparent within a linear chain of instances—from photograph to photograph, for example—it’s evident that it’s senseless to consider the interaction between wall, photograph, floor, and beholder as instantiating a serial progression. After all, could we say that the photograph precedes the wall or vice versa?

Indeed we cannot. Rather than speak of seriality, then, it’s more productive to comprehend Litzler’s photographs as operating within and as constellations. The non-hierarchical and non-linear structure of the constellation stands in opposition to that of the serial chain, and each element or particle of the constellation possess significance only insofar as it intersects with the other elements and particles. In referring to ‘particles’, I speak not only of the photographs themselves but their surroundings—each is a particle that must combine or relate with the other particles rather than replicate the obdurate resistance of the object, and the viewer, too, becomes one of these particles. Holding the constellation together is something akin to an invisible force, perhaps one similar to the invisible forces that seemingly acts upon the people she photographs and which causes or enjoins their bodies bend and balance in response. [...]

11 For the Gaze, see Jacques Lacan, Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, ed. by Jacques Alain-Miller, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York and London: W. Norton, 1981); for the Mirror Stage, see ‘The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience’ in Écrits, trans. by Bruce Fink (New York and London: W. Norton, 2006), pp. 75-82.

12 Jules Janin, quoted from Heinz Buddenmeier, Panorama, Diorama, Photographie (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1970), p. 207. In this context also see Richard Rudisill, Mirror Image (Alberquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1971).

13 Litzler’s scepticism towards the notion of the object might to some degree correspond with Graham Harman’s rigorous defence of the ‘object’ under the banner of speculative realism—despite their potential disagreement over the usability of the term ‘object’—insofar as both are critical of the subject/object dualism. Harman’s own position is to resist this dualism and to critique philosophies that promote a more interdependent transaction amid these two terms. Instead, his philosophical approach contends that we and everything else (real or imaginable, actual or fiction) are objects. See, for example, Graham Harman, ‘Space, Time, Essence: An Object-Orientated Approach” in Towards Speculative Realism: Essays and Lectures (Winchester: Zero Books, 2010), pp. 140-169.

Virginie Litzler edits Valérie Jouve,
text for Lovingly, Rose Peebles, exhibition catalogue, 2010

Looking means spending time.
A time in silence... to hear images.

The metaphorical expression ‘listening to images’ could depict my experience and engagement with Valérie’s work and yet still translate the necessary physicality that her work implies. It seems important to use this terminology, to explore the idea that editing could be here understood as composing. Composing with the space around and between the images. Creating an alchemy where images may extend, spread and elongate. Punctuating the overflowing—finding the necessary point of balance where images resound.

"For me, it is interesting that you are appropriating the work in order to build on a wall, for a time..." says Valérie.

Our editing started by discussing, exchanging and connecting with each other’s work, but what Valérie voices above all is the notion of appropriation in the ongoing process of composing, a donation but yet an essential fact: what is mine is yours.

Composing here is arranging an ensemble of pieces to form, to view images in a space, in a time, in order to hear.

"Re-sounding," says Virginie.

"Re-acting", says Valérie.