being alone
“Evans’s subway photographs of 1938-41 are a bundle of contradictions. They describe people as individuals, and in that fundamental sense the pictures are portraits. But each person is presented as a single unit in a potentially infinite series, and the environment could hardly be more impersonal. Unlike most photographic portraits, these exclude any possibility of exchange between sitter and photographer (and thus between sitter and viewer). On the contrary, the intimacy of the pictures depends on their subjects’ utter lack of awareness of the photographer. That intimacy is in itself contradictory. Evans’s subway portraits address the deepest of inner secrets, only to assert that they are incommunicable.”
Peter Galassi wrote this in 2000 about Walker Evans’s Many are Called, but he could have been writing about Dean Sameshima’s being alone, published this year by Soft Opening. Granted, the two are about something very different. Evans, people lost in thought on the subway. Sameshima, people watching porn in Berlin. That aside, the two feel close. First, there is Galassi’s definition of what makes a picture a portrait: a portrait describes someone. Sameshima’s pictures are portraits in this rudimentary way – they are of people. Maybe more so because they’re watching porn, and porn is porn because it’s watched by someone. So you can say that the person on page fifteen watches porn in the same way you might say that someone likes football. A description of sorts. But then for the same reasons Galassi speaks of, Sameshima’s pictures fall short of being portraits. There’s no looking towards (no ‘possibility of exchange’), only the back of a head or the line of a shoulder. Yes, a shoulder that belongs to someone, but a shoulder that could belong to anyone. Portraits, but not.
Then there are the cinemas. Impersonal the way most cinemas are but personal because of how domestic these cinemas are. Like living rooms with the litter of time spent in comfort – ashtrays and empty bottles. And then there is the porn, which takes something personal and flattens it into what Galassi calls a ‘potentially infinite series’. It’s impersonal in that vapid way, but then I catch myself: is porn impersonal or just not intimate? In hindsight, I think the latter. Which leads to another contradiction: while being alone feels less intimate because of porn, it’s intimate because, like in Many are Called, the people in Sameshima’s pictures don’t know Sameshima is looking at them looking at porn. Intimacy through unknowing. There is another reason for the book’s intimacy, which Evans speaks to when he says that in the subway, “The guard is down and the mask is off, even more than when lone in bedrooms”. I think it’s the same for cinemas, you just have to be looking from the front. But probably the most obvious contradiction of all is the title that promises solitude while Sameshima is always there with the person in the photograph, as we are here with Sameshima.
Like Evans’s subway pictures then, being alone is full of contradictions. Portraits, but not. Telling, but not. Personal, but not. Alone, but not. Most people think contradictions are bad. At best, uncertain. At worst, hypocritical. But here they are good. It gives what are simple pictures a richness, makes them layered and slippery in a gently challenging way. They are also, I think, a way for Sameshima to veto the judgement others will jump to, and instead leave the book delicately open.
As an object, there isn’t much to say. It’s simple, beautiful, modest. A black cover, spacious pages and the occasional elegant French fold. But being a book is more than enough if not perfect, because books are often read in the same in-betweenness as the people watching porn. Alone, but not. Just as I finish reading this latest draft sat up in bed, with the neighbour’s gospel music pouring through the wall behind my head. Alone, but not.
“Evans’s subway photographs of 1938-41 are a bundle of contradictions. They describe people as individuals, and in that fundamental sense the pictures are portraits. But each person is presented as a single unit in a potentially infinite series, and the environment could hardly be more impersonal. Unlike most photographic portraits, these exclude any possibility of exchange between sitter and photographer (and thus between sitter and viewer). On the contrary, the intimacy of the pictures depends on their subjects’ utter lack of awareness of the photographer. That intimacy is in itself contradictory. Evans’s subway portraits address the deepest of inner secrets, only to assert that they are incommunicable.”
Peter Galassi wrote this in 2000 about Walker Evans’s Many are Called, but he could have been writing about Dean Sameshima’s being alone, published this year by Soft Opening. Granted, the two are about something very different. Evans, people lost in thought on the subway. Sameshima, people watching porn in Berlin. That aside, the two feel close. First, there is Galassi’s definition of what makes a picture a portrait: a portrait describes someone. Sameshima’s pictures are portraits in this rudimentary way – they are of people. Maybe more so because they’re watching porn, and porn is porn because it’s watched by someone. So you can say that the person on page fifteen watches porn in the same way you might say that someone likes football. A description of sorts. But then for the same reasons Galassi speaks of, Sameshima’s pictures fall short of being portraits. There’s no looking towards (no ‘possibility of exchange’), only the back of a head or the line of a shoulder. Yes, a shoulder that belongs to someone, but a shoulder that could belong to anyone. Portraits, but not.
Then there are the cinemas. Impersonal the way most cinemas are but personal because of how domestic these cinemas are. Like living rooms with the litter of time spent in comfort – ashtrays and empty bottles. And then there is the porn, which takes something personal and flattens it into what Galassi calls a ‘potentially infinite series’. It’s impersonal in that vapid way, but then I catch myself: is porn impersonal or just not intimate? In hindsight, I think the latter. Which leads to another contradiction: while being alone feels less intimate because of porn, it’s intimate because, like in Many are Called, the people in Sameshima’s pictures don’t know Sameshima is looking at them looking at porn. Intimacy through unknowing. There is another reason for the book’s intimacy, which Evans speaks to when he says that in the subway, “The guard is down and the mask is off, even more than when lone in bedrooms”. I think it’s the same for cinemas, you just have to be looking from the front. But probably the most obvious contradiction of all is the title that promises solitude while Sameshima is always there with the person in the photograph, as we are here with Sameshima.
Like Evans’s subway pictures then, being alone is full of contradictions. Portraits, but not. Telling, but not. Personal, but not. Alone, but not. Most people think contradictions are bad. At best, uncertain. At worst, hypocritical. But here they are good. It gives what are simple pictures a richness, makes them layered and slippery in a gently challenging way. They are also, I think, a way for Sameshima to veto the judgement others will jump to, and instead leave the book delicately open.
As an object, there isn’t much to say. It’s simple, beautiful, modest. A black cover, spacious pages and the occasional elegant French fold. But being a book is more than enough if not perfect, because books are often read in the same in-betweenness as the people watching porn. Alone, but not. Just as I finish reading this latest draft sat up in bed, with the neighbour’s gospel music pouring through the wall behind my head. Alone, but not.