05/12/2016, 09*43 Colin Batty, Photomanipulation, and the Neo-Victorian | The Victorianist: BAVS Postgraduates Page 1 of 13 https://victorianist.wordpress.com/2016/04/22/3987/ T he Victorianist: BAVS Postgraduates British Association for Victorian Studies Postgraduate Pages, hosted by Abby Boucher (Glasgow) and Briony Wickes (Kings) Colin Batty, Photomanipulation, and the Neo- Victorian A pril 22, 2016 · by silverforketiquette · in Neo-Victorian Reviews , Research Blog , Researcher Blog . · Megen de Bruin-Molé (@MegenJM (https://twitter.com/MegenJM) ) is a second-year PhD candidate with the School of English, Communication and Philosophy (http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/people/research-students/view/220369-bruin-mole-megen-de) at Cardiff University. Her current research focuses on neo-historical fiction, using the theme of monsters and the monstrous to explore how and why the twenty-first century persistently appropriates historical fictions, figures, and traces. Follow her blog (angelsandapes.com (http://angelsandapes.com/) |@AngelsApes (https://twitter.com/AngelsApes) ) for updates and related articles. I have long been a fan of photomanipulation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo_manipulation) . I like the way it disturbs our preconception of the photograph as a faithful representation of reality. It’s an exciting time to be interested in photography and photographic appropriation more generally, as the work of Richard Prince (http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/30/8691257/richard-prince-instagram- photos-copyright-law-fair-use) , Kevin J. Weir (http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/shortcuts/2014/sep/28/gif-archive-photos- kevin-weir-flux-machine) , or Whitney Bell (http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/this-woman- turned-her-collection-of-unsolicited-dick-pics-into-an-art-show) can attest. We are entertained and intrigued by appropriations of other people’s images (and historical traces). As they test the limits of copyright and the ethics of appropriation, they rewrite the objects they reference.
Transcript
05/12/2016, 09*43Colin Batty, Photomanipulation, and the Neo-Victorian | The Victorianist: BAVS Postgraduates
Page 1 of 13https://victorianist.wordpress.com/2016/04/22/3987/
The Victorianist: BAVS Postgraduates
British Association for Victorian Studies PostgraduatePages, hosted by Abby Boucher (Glasgow) and BrionyWickes (Kings)
Colin Batty, Photomanipulation, and the Neo-Victorian
April 22, 2016 · by silverforketiquette · in Neo-Victorian Reviews, Research Blog, ResearcherBlog. ·Megen de Bruin-Molé (@MegenJM (https://twitter.com/MegenJM)) is a second-year PhDcandidate with the School of English, Communication and Philosophy(http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/people/research-students/view/220369-bruin-mole-megen-de) atCardiff University. Her current research focuses on neo-historical fiction, using the theme ofmonsters and the monstrous to explore how and why the twenty-first century persistentlyappropriates historical fictions, figures, and traces. Follow her blog (angelsandapes.com(http://angelsandapes.com/)|@AngelsApes (https://twitter.com/AngelsApes)) for updates andrelated articles.
I have long been a fan of photomanipulation(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo_manipulation). I like the way it disturbs ourpreconception of the photograph as a faithful representation of reality. It’s an exciting time to beinterested in photography and photographic appropriation more generally, as the work ofRichard Prince (http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/30/8691257/richard-prince-instagram-photos-copyright-law-fair-use), Kevin J. Weir(http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/shortcuts/2014/sep/28/gif-archive-photos-kevin-weir-flux-machine), or Whitney Bell (http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/this-woman-turned-her-collection-of-unsolicited-dick-pics-into-an-art-show) can attest. We are entertainedand intrigued by appropriations of other people’s images (and historical traces). As they test thelimits of copyright and the ethics of appropriation, they rewrite the objects they reference.
Enter artist Colin Batty, whose most 2014 project‘Meet the Family’ appropriated over a hundredcabinet cards
(http://blog.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/find-out-when-a-photo-was-taken-identify-a-cabinet-card/) – postcard-style portraits popular from the late nineteenth century, circa 1870, tothe end of the first World War.[1] Batty hand-painted each cabinet card in his collection toinclude Gothic monsters, aliens, and various other figures from popular culture. No Photoshopnecessary. The physical cabinet cards are currently held by the Peculiarium Gallery in Portland,Oregon (where you can still buy some of them from the gallery’s website(http://www.peculiarium.com/colin-batty/)). Originally, they were purchased in bulk from athrift store.[2]
Batty’s art works almost as a kind of historical revision or ventriloquism. In Batty’s own words,the cabinet cards ‘suggest their own stories. Some are just crying out for me to stick somethingin there’.[3] Behind his art, then, Batty sketches a story of forgotten archive material that haslapsed from memory, and is just waiting to be repurposed, its story retold for our entertainment.
Batty’s cabinet cards express a desire to expose the strangeness of the past, and he seems mainlyinterested in doing so by exploiting the uncanny resemblance between the supernatural and theeveryday. At the same time, however, they are intended to be patently ridiculous. Consider‘Blobby McGee’ (left). This image would never be mistaken for a Victorian photograph,
although that is indeed what is beingrepresented. Because of the way sections ofwoman’s body have been painted out, andother sections have been added, in her newform she resembles a human lava lamp – aninvention that would not exist for more thana century.
Batty’s other work (mostly sculpture) ofteninvolves garishly coloured caricatures ofwell-known people and characters. Hisdefault mode of expression is the surreal, buthis cartoonish exaggeration of real people’sexisting features are not normalised in a waythat situates them firmly in the traditionalworld of fine art. Some of his previous workhas been as a modeller in the special effectsand arts departments for various films,including Paul Berry’s short film adaptationThe Sandman, and a number of Tim Burton’sprojects (specifically Mars Attacks! and TheCorpse Bride).[4] This affiliation occasionallyshows through in his work on the cabinetcards as well Consider ‘Brainiac and Son’(Figure 16), which bears a strong resemblanceto the aliens from Mars Attacks!. Like the restof his work, Batty’s cabinet cards ultimatelymake monstrous caricatures of the peopledepicted.
In each card, Batty teases out the uncanny aspects of the characters or environments depicted,painting in a seemingly random assembly of monsters, aliens, and ghosts, mostly from popularculture. Some of the images do make a more direct link to a Victorian past, however. Cards like‘Chimp Siblings’ or ‘Elephant Dude’ (see below), are nods to well-known Victorian freaks likeStephan Bibrowski (a.k.a. ‘Lionel the Lion-faced Boy(http://www.thehumanmarvels.com/lionel-the-lion-faced-boy/)’), or Joseph Merrick (the‘Elephant Man (http://www.thehumanmarvels.com/joseph-merrick-the-elephant-man/)’).Others reference conservative ideas about femininity and domesticity, depicting Victorianwomen as robots or puppets to convey a lack of mobility, autonomy, or personhood (see‘Fembot’ and ‘I’m Your Puppet’ below). Still others draw inspiration from Victorian spiritphotography (http://all-that-is-interesting.com/spirit-photography-victorian-england) or 1950simages of alien sightings (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2979867/Can-solve-UFO-cases-Vintage-alien-photos-governments-couldn-t-explain-reveal-world-s-strangest-sightings.html) (‘Girl and Frank’, ‘Alien in Crowd’, ’Smoking Smiling Demon’, below).
At first glance, these images seem to possess the ‘posture of critique, even assault’ that Sandersattributes to appropriative works.[5] It is difficult to find the historical commentary in an imagelike ‘Miss Chairy’ (below) which, to borrow Jerome de Groot’s comments on ‘histsploitation’and popular television, seems to be ‘wrong just to be wrong, and to demonstrate that historicalfiction does not need to have a point’.[6] The various paratextual presentations of these cards,
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however, suggest that all of the images – even the overt caricatures – can be read in a lessnegative light. Though Batty’s caricature is exploitative, it comes from a place of fondness ratherthan violence, ultimately finding an almost earnest revelation in its historical anachronism.
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Batty’s cabinet cards have a strong family motif. They are a kind of freak show of what, as the2014 collection of his work (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Meet-Family-Mike-Wellins/dp/1500426180) claims, are our own kooky aunts, uncles, and ancestors. This is ofcourse an ironic assertion, as the characters in these images are no longer human, but it impliesa kind of monstrosity in humanity that feeds back into a very twenty-first-century idea of themonster that is spiritual or social, rather than physical.
The photobook collection of Colin Batty’s cabinet cards, edited by Mike Wellins and LisaFreeman, contains precious little background on or introduction to the work contained withinits pages. It does, however, include a very interesting epigraph and postscript, which help togive the collection some context. The epigraph, attributed to American novelist Mark Twain,reads ‘A man with a hump-backed uncle mustn’t make fun of another’s cross-eyes aunt’.[7] Thisis part of a longer excerpt from an interview, published in the New York World on 11 May 1879,in which Twain explains why he never wrote a book about England:
I have spent a good deal of time in England […] and I made a world of notes, but it was ofno use. […] No, there wasn’t anything to satirize – what I mean is, you couldn’t satirize anygiven thing in England in any but a half-hearted way, because your conscience told you tolook nearer home and you would find that very thing at your own door. A man with ahump-backed uncle mustn’t make fun of another’s cross-eyes aunt.[8]
Though it is possible that this refers to the British origin of the cabinet cards, it seems morelikely that it suggests a motivation for Batty’s alienating imagery. Rather than acting from someurge to preserve history or write immigrant identities back into public memory, as Travis Louiedoes, Batty’s motivations seem more inclined towards problematising the white, Westernworld’s understanding of its own past.
Take ‘Melissa Muscles’ and ‘Captain Clevage’ (below), in which the subject’s head has beentransposed onto the body of an apparently opposite gender. The first bears a similarity tovintage images of circus strongmen, and the second is visually resonant of mid twentieth-century pinups. Not only are these bodies incongruous with the subject’s visibly masculine orfeminine facial features, the mild nudity in these images is incongruous with the stereotypicalhistorical prudery imagined by twenty-first-century audiences. (Note: there are some NSFWimages at the gallery’s website (http://www.peculiarium.com/colin-batty/)).
In addition, they indirectly reference humorous twenty-first-century memes and pop cultureicons, including ‘overly manly man (http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/overly-manly-man)’and Marvel’s Hulk (http://marvel.com/universe/Hulk_(Bruce_Banner)). Batty’s titles for thecabinet cards, which often alliterate or rhyme, also contribute to the ridiculous tone his workcreates. By constructing these images as ridiculous, Batty both draws attention to the
problematic depictions of gender that populate the contemporary media landscape, andindirectly challenges our stereotypes of historical culture as well. Batty’s cabinet cards suggestthat we would do better to get comfortable with the uncomfortable elements hidden in ourVictorian past, so that we can begin to work through them on a more productive level.
The book’s postscript presents a similarreading of Batty’s images. It states: ‘Thefamily – that dear octopus from whosetentacles we never quite escape, nor, in ourinmost hearts, ever quite wish to’,[9] and isattributed to another, British novelist, DodieSmith. It forms part of a toast in her playDear Octopus (1938), which depicts therelationships between three generations of alarge family. In the context of Batty’s work,this citation seems to suggest that instead oflaughing at our strange ancestors, we mustrecognise our similarity (and attachment) tothem. In Wellins and Freeman’s book, then,Batty’s cabinet cards are all about equatingthe aesthetics of historical family portraiturewith the strange and uncomfortable entitythat is modernity, and modernhistoriography.
In addition to questioning the necessity oftaking history seriously, Batty’s work alsoraises questions about the ethics of historicalappropriation. Is Batty defacing thesephotographs? Yes, quite literally, thoughthere is still an amicable side to Batty’sexploitation of these forgotten images. Byvirtue of the existing historical evidence,
which is composed mainly of white, middle class subjects, these characters are already ’neutral’.Despite – or more accurately, because of – their ridiculous monstrosity, we come to recognisethese people as ‘family’. The distance between them and us is bridged through laughter. Wherethese photographs have been universalised and anonymised, Batty makes them familiar againthrough humour and caricature.
All images were taken from the Peculiaruim gallery website (http://www.peculiarium.com/colin-batty/),or from the Guardian’s analysis (http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/31/colin-battys-sci-fi-portraiture-in-pictures) of Batty’s work.
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[1] Meet the Family: Altered Photographs by Colin Batty, ed. by Mark Wellins and Lisa Freeman(Portland, OR: Freakybuttrue, 2014).
[2] Jim Hardison, ‘Forward’, in Meet the Family: Altered Photographs by Colin Batty, ed. by MarkWellins and Lisa Freeman (Portland, OR: Freakybuttrue, 2014), pp. 1–2 (p. 1).
[3] Kathryn Bromwich, ‘Colin Batty’s Sci-Fi Portraiture – in Pictures’, The Guardian, 31 January2015, para. 1 <http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/31/colin-battys-sci-fi-portraiture-in-pictures>(http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/jan/31/colin-battys-sci-fi-portraiture-in-pictures>); [accessed 25 February 2016].
[4] Paul Berry, The Sandman (Batty Berry Mackinnon Productions, 1991); Tim Burton, MarsAttacks! (Warner Bros., 1996); Tim Burton and Mike Johnson, Corpse Bride (Warner Bros., 2005).
[5] Julie Sanders, Adaptation and Appropriation (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 4.
[6] Jerome de Groot, Remaking History: The Past in Contemporary Historical Fictions (London:Routledge, 2016),p. 176.
[7] Wellins and Freeman, eds., Meet the Family, epigraph.
[8] Mark Twain, Mark Twain Speaks for Himself, ed. by Paul Fatout (West Lafayette, IN: PurdueUniversity Press, 1997), p. 111.
[9] Wellins and Freeman, eds., Meet the Family, postscript.
