The Face of Coffe

“I need to clean myself up with abstract thoughts, as transparent as water”
Jean Paul Sartre in Nausea

This text is taken from an essay I wrote some time ago. But what makes it interesting again is that Nespresso recently opened a store in the heart of Oslo. And George Clooney is still the face of Nespresso coffe.

Dreaming of coffee

This photograph¹ is an advertisement for Nespresso coffee makers that I found in Time magazine published 18^th of December 2006. Thus being an advertisement for a product in current circulation of the time I’m writing the analysis. This will certainly lead me to find other connotations than if it was an advert belonging to times passed. Because I’m living at present with the ad, and I’m an occasional Time Magazine reader, thus potentially in the target group of the advertisers, and I’m also a coffee drinker. The table is set for ingestion of influence, and discovery of recipes.

The image contains three main elements; a machine, text and a man. In addition to this the colour black is prominently present, covering more than fifty percent of the image surface, making the objects depicted appear as coming out of the dead silent night, as fluent images in a dream. To invoke dream like imagery in an advertisement makes perfect sense if we are to take in to account Freud’s statement that dreams are basically wish fulfilments.² A crucial difference between the dream and the advert is that the dream in sleep constitutes itself internally and the advert-dream is constituted externally, thus observed/fed to us while awake. Thus to fulfil the dream presented in the advert one needs to experience the product, and this means, in most cases, to buy the product.

Going back to the Nespresso. “Let us try to ‘skim of’ the different messages it contains.”³ The machine looks like something taken out of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: a space Odyssey. As a matter of fact the name of the machine printed on its lower left front side is le Cube, phonetically quite similar to the film director’s surname. In the mid section of this movie we are present in, or it is presented to us that in a near future man have peaked to a state close to perfect symbiosis with his technological surroundings. Surroundings being as beautifully designed as they are technically advanced. Nothing is left of the steam machine aesthetics of welded joints and large bolts. Everything is smooth, cool and in harmony. With its brushed aluminium and polished steel surface, and what seems to be a small elevator, on which is placed a small translucent coffee cup, filled with freshly brewed espresso, the Nespresso machine gives this same aura of beauty, elegance and high technology as that of Kubrick’s visual future to come. I’m almost inclined to believe that by placing one of these machines in my surroundings I can come one step closer to experiencing the future to come, in body and soul. The ad reminds us of this with the small printed text in the bottom right corner of the image, ‘Nespresso® Coffee, body and soul.’ This text puzzles me. Nespresso is self evident since it is the name of the product. It informs me that this is the name to look for if I want to enact the ‘dream’. Coffee has also got is rightful place since it is coffee drinks that is the product of this machine. If we go on to look at the next photograph present in the image we might find the justification for body, or at least body-parts. But what about soul?

Over the photograph of the machine body parts of a man emerges from the black. Only intersected by a rhetorical question, presumably asked by the person who the body-parts belong to; ‘Nespresso. What else?’ In fact the question is put forward by a recognisable man. The two hands and the head presented, belongs to the rather famous and respected Hollywood actor George Clooney. He is holding a similar cup, also filled with coffee, like the one on the elevator, establishing the link that it is coffee from that very machine he is about to pour into his body, subsequently invigorating his soul? However farfetched I’ve arrived at a justification for soul as well.

I’ve already cited Barthes once from his essay ‘The Rhetoric of the image’⁴, and it strikes me that it might be in its place to do so again. Even though he spoke of the French language when he found a flavour of ‘Italianicity’⁵ in both the product name and the colours of his Panzani ad, I find such an ‘Italianicity’ in my current ad of choice. Espresso, probably a national drink in Italy, is incorporated in the product name. The suit jacket Clooney is wearing might as well be of Italian design. Luxury fabrics and tailor fitted suits go easy with the popular impression of Italy, so doe’s the sophisticated design of the coffee machine, all smelling of catwalks and high fashion, very common connotations of Italy and Italian.

Since we are looking at photographs we might as well comment upon qualities belonging to the technical sphere of photography. First of all the lighting is a great meaning bearer in the two photographs making up the whole. A warm light, yellow coloured, falls slightly from the back, on to Clooney’s left side, suggesting an intimate sphere between Clooney and the coffee cup. He is clearly enjoying the smell and taste of it. The warm light also enhances the suit jacket, and the luxury of the garment it is made of. The other light, falling inn on his face from his right front side is cooler in colour, has the purpose of describing his trustful and charming look. The cooler light also distances the viewer from Clooney; he is more intimate with the coffee than with us, thus securing the possibility of putting of the potential male buyer who might not want a particular intimate relation with him.

The same warm light is not used on the machine, the warmth belongs to the human and the latter’s relation to the (hot) coffee. Highlighting that it is coffee we are essentially talking about. The machine is only a step on the way of reaching that soulful state, but while you wait for your coffee you can enjoy the implied soulful design of the machine, neatly presented in the cooler descriptive light.

The advert builds its reasoning upon style, in design, luxury and sophistication, and the recognition of its product by a celebrity. Let us just hope Clooney won’t emerge out of the black surface of my coffee next time I take a sip, as he emerges in the photograph, and I can do nothing else than to wait and see if he turns up in my dreams.

1 See picture

2 Sigmund Freud ‘The Dream Work’ in The Interpretation of Dreams (Hertfordshire,1997) p 213

3 Roland Barthes, ’The Rhetoric of the image’, in Image Music Text (London, 1977) p 33

4 See note 7

5 Roland Barthes, ’The Rhetoric of the image’, p 33

Everyday absurdities.

Some things appear meaningful in them selves just by doing them . One of them are photographing...

Not so sucsessfull...

This piece of work was made during my masters studie in England, and did not recieve to good a reception. I guess the low tech style was not apreciated, and of cours it might be taht it does not suit this project. The text written inside the frames read Walour in the face of the enemy, which is what you need to show to get the Victorian cross. The interesting aspect of these war medals is that several nations has chosen the Iron Cross as a base design for their highest ranking medal for bravery in combat.
Bringing the toy soldiers in to the mix is reflecting my amazement on the way we make heroes of killers in certain settings and criminals of them in other settings.

Retro-intro-centro-spective

I've been updating, and deleting on this blog. I've removed stuff that to me seems sort of unfitting here; in retrospect. That is also admitting that ones judgement evolves, or maybe it only changes according to fashion, or the social circles one currently is part of. In time I'll be transelating all posts from norwegian to english; or rather reinterpreting. What once was writen is now understood i a new way, and put forward in new words and in another language.

Please take time to revisit older posts, and comment if you feel like it.

(The image in this post is part of the unpublished book "The Lowly Duet". A romantic yet post-modern look at an alienated view on nature and landscape.)

Just honest or pure speculation?

The mal "Oslo City" (Oslo's bigest shoping center), just started their latest campaign. The slogan says 'Customers Wanted' og directly translated ''We wish for customers''. The poster shown here contains a picture of two forarms and their hands folding, like in prayer. Reading prayer in to these pictures is underlined by two simple facts. One is that the text states a wish for something. Prayer usually consists of making a wish. You as a deity if it can not help you in som way or another by granting what you wish for. The other fact is that another poster in this same campaign shows one forearm and a hand with it's fingers clutched around a crucifix. It is probably not necessary to point out the link between prayer and crucifix.
The holy-days approaching further underlines the religiosity in this campaign. So what is happening here? Have the merchant society tuned to religion to help them out of the current financial crisis? Or should it be understood in the way that the consumer is god in the church of shopping so now in the greatest of needs the merchants turn to prayer?
An extremely sad fact is that even our financial minister Kristin Halvorsen's (from the Socialist Left party) answer in these crazed times is; keep on shoping! The religious believe in the market as self contained power is spreading all over. Human beings are the ones trading, the market is a human construction. So humans need to regulate it. It is beter that we do it our selves, than leaving it to the priests of economic theory, and comercial companies. Let Oslo City burn in depresion hell, let them keep praying. One can see this latest campaign of theirs as the most honest confirmation yet of the consumer as boss aka god. If we don't shop; they'll drop.

Projects on ice...

What happens to all those projects that go on ice? This with the working title "war toys do toy wars", or maybe "just do it"? Well feel free to be inspired. War ohh - ha ha- what is it good for?

Exhibition

Saturday the 24th our one week exhibition at Bogstad Gård opens. The theme of this exhibition is landscape photography in the cross section between nature and urban life. Four individual projects combined in one show to give different ways to view our pressent surroundings.

GO! GO! Trendkill

Mirrors

Still Alive

I have been living in London without stable conection to the nett for about a year, and will continue to do this for about a yer, but will come back strong in the near future on the quest for strong blogging.

The featured image is the one for my graduation exhibition in September. The series is called White out. I'm trying to subvert the message in outdor advertising and create a space for personal dreams and contemplation. A space that inspires a walk away from the prefabricated set of material and highly utopian dreams prodused by our consumption based way of living.

 
There are some really weird constellations of personalities at the Madam Toussaud's wax museum: Superman, Indiana Jones and a retired James Bond. All of them male fantasy figures. Both figures of fantasy and figures for the male aspiration, or subject for the day dream. So they all come from the same place, but the thing is you’ve never seen them together. Whit so many things in common, one should think that they would have something to chat about? 

Auto-Voyeaur at the Hayward loo.
RAKE

An image i recently re-discoverd going through my files. It's from a trainride from my child hood home back to where i then was living in 2004 Oslo. It is early, weary early morning.
RAKE

Another London Sky-line. See picture beneath.
RAKE

A friend of mine noted that London realy have no sky-line. As one might imagine to be one of the properties of a weary large city, as London. Sky-line pictures realy sometimes constitute the visual memory, or image of the city for a lot of people. So I think i've tried to find such a picture of London.
RAKE

An image i recently re-discoverd going through my files. It's from a trainride from my child hood home back to where i then was living in 2004 Oslo. It is early, weary early morning.
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Photography theory

The base(ment) of critique.

So what is photography theory? One should think that I knew that since it is what I’m studying. But I’m not quiet sure. If I take the standard of the debate around photography in my native land Norway as a ground for thinking of photography it would be almost as easy as the following: With very few exceptions photography theory is the basic understanding of the technical aspects of producing a photograph, and we all know exactly what a photograph is. Don’t we? You just need to get the focus right. It’s nice with depth of field, not too much grain and by the love of vision no pixilation, and correction of colours. Not to forget. Then we can talk about the interesting ways of weary functional cropping. The drama in the composition, and the sensitivity embedded in the look of the model. And of course that you could have dug up the tree that cast such an irritating and dominating form in the back of the picture. (But isn’t the picture flat?)

I’ll try to write out the last bit of sarcasms here and now. There is of course another debate going on in Norway, but it isn’t really getting anywhere, and it’s conducted in such a small group that the discussion ends up in the total misbelieve and grieve of the quality in the debate going on outside that little circle. There are no real art critics in Norway who can think deeply and thoroughly on photography in the context of art, and very few being able to grasp the full reach of the photograph in our daily lives. (Who can? But then again there is no one trying.) So I guess that’s why I left for London, and yes the discourse here is good, almost great. People really seem to have given some thought to what they write and say. It’s not just produced to fill out space and time, it’s actually meant to expand on the field of knowledge.

So now then, what is photography theory; now that I’ve blown out some steam? The first I can think of is that it is a range of discourses concerning the different areas where photography makes an appearance. All these areas define photography according to its own needs. Medical photography for example needs to show the motif or model as clearly and naturally as possible. In a case of before and after shots of a plastic surgery the doctor wants to show his skills without the hassle of bringing in earlier patients, and then undoing the operation and then redoing it, which would keep him locked in a vicious circle of one everlasting surgical operation. Thus ending up with something even worse the Michael Jackson and Frankenstein’s monster spontaneously merged together.

For an insurance agent a photograph is a document that proves the results of the investigation. For an artist it can be a documentation of a performance or an illustration of an artistic theory among other things. Or a product hung in a gallery ready to be bought, to put food on the table and pay the mortgage.

So photography is not one thing as one might think, and it is here that the theorisation becomes extra complicated. So photography needs to lend theories from lots of different academic disciplines. It is poor in its own domain. Media theory, film theory, cultural studies and semiotics, and to some extent art history; is all domains in which photography takes theories from to explain it self and how it works.

One important point being made by Victor Burgin in the essay “Something about photography theory” is the distinction between theory and criticism.

Criticisms realm is most often in newspapers and media in the form of a metering of the quality according to the critics taste and chois of theoretical point of view. Critique in the school or studio setting is based upon a hopefully, on beforehand, agreed upon set of criteria for how to judge the picture. In my opinion much in the tradition of art history, where refinement of technique and the prosperity towards masterdom is key in determining what to think and who to scrutinise.

Theory on the other hand sets for to explain and contemplate on aspects around what, where, why, what sort of, and how could that be? And so on when it comes to photographs.

Theory is then the base of our ability to criticise.

So to anyone claiming that theory takes away the spontaneity in the perception of photographs. The perception which leads up to a critical judgement of I like or I dislike; those spontaneous critical judgements are based upon theories. Burgin says this in a weary clear passage in the above mentioned essay.

“We’re here to talk about theory. Many people are against it. Theory gets in the way of spontaneity. Theory is a realm of bloodless abstractions which have nothing to do with the cut-and-thrust of practice. For us, however, there is no state of Edenic innocence outside of theories. If we were ever in such a state, we lost it long ago when we learned to speak. If you can understand what I’m saying then you’re views of the world, whatever they may be, rest on a foundation of mainly tacit, unspoken, assumptions which make up the interlocking complex theories we know as ‘common sense’.”

Victor Burgin: Something About Photography Theory [1]

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[1]From: The New Art History, Eds: A.L. Reeds & F. Borzello, Camden Press, London 1986

Reality

1 : the quality or state of being real
2 a (1) : a real event, entity, or state of affairs reality- (2) : the totality of real things and events reality- b : something that is neither derivative nor dependent but exists necessarily
3 : television programming that features videos of actual occurrences (as a police chase, stunt, or natural disaster) -- often used attributively (reality TV)
- in reality : in actual fact

(Stolen without permission from Merriam Webster online dictionary)

"Reality is what refuses to go away when I stop believing in it."
- Philip K. Dick

Reality is one of those strange and compelling concepts that we indulge in every single day of our lives. Maybe indulge is not the right term. Maybe reality is forcing itself upon us, or we more or less ignore its existence? Yet we are all sure of its existence, or else it would not be real. But what then is not reality?

Our language is based upon opposites, a concepts needs its opposite for us to be able to grasp it. If we did not have a concept of the non-real we would not know the real etc. etc.

This has been thoroughly thought through by other people so I’ll not bore you with these very well known facts for long, (I hope) but it is the starting point of a long train\strain of, or rather mutating thought about the subject. And in these thoughts will spring other fruits of my more and more confused mind.

I’m currently reading quiet a lot of Roland Barthes and other semiologists, so things written here will be influenced by that. I function like that. Whatever I’m reading at the moment becomes my current way of thinking. It’s like taking a peace of clothing in to the dressing room and try it on. If it fits with both your wardrobe, -your current notion of what is logical (another difficult concept; logics)-, and your size, -your ability to grasp what it is about-, you buy it. And the prise is the time you spend thinking about it including reading, and the effort put in to understanding the thought.

I think Plato’s cave metaphor will be next up in this metamorphic mosaic of online thinking exhibitionism. If I write weird, it’s because English is not my maternal language. As if that’s an excuse.

Thank you for you’re attention.

rake

 

Milan Continued

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