Archive for the Practice Category
A case of seduction - part 2
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I approached the photographs cautiously. It had been my decision to assemble a public exhibition of the evidence of my investigation, but the reality appeared to have an uncomfortable edge. |
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I was trying to learn from previous inquiries, Sherlock Holmes’ search for Mr. Hosmer Angel’s identity and Sigmund Freud’s explorations of Dora’s hysteria. Like theirs, my case was a puzzling one. |
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My search had produced plenty of clues; still, the culprit – seduction – was at large. |
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Seduction always eludes the grasp of those that attempt to confront it directly. Its character is volatile, often linked to moral, sexual and criminal concerns. Did I ever mention to you that Frank Sinatra was convicted of an offence of seduction? |
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It usually operates in dual situations – it is always a matter of two – and involves the getting of another to do what it wants. But do not worry; force and coercion are not part of its elegant modus operandi. |
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Instead, it will play with the victim’s free will. Sometimes, as the evidence shows, it may even be pleasurable. Do not be fooled, though, its power is mighty. |
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The art gallery is a place seduction likes to visit. This gathering of clues is, therefore, a kind of trap, a way of calling it into play. The images displayed are traces of a very particular seduction, for this is a serial offender we are dealing with. |
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What we have before us would baffle Holmes and intrigue Freud. They are the remnants of one woman’s hysterical journey through contemporary shopping arcades with their obscene displays. |
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The crime, in this instance, is to repeatedly stop the woman in her tracks, making her unable to look elsewhere. This will cause her trouble, as she will lose precious time (apart from her free will, of course). |
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She will be late wherever she has to go today, inevitably very late, as she cannot resist seduction’s call. What does the object want? |
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I shook my head and returned my gaze to the photographs of the young woman. It suddenly seemed more playful than criminal, reminding me of the attitude seduction takes. |
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I wondered silently who was the victim and who was the perpetrator. |
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I shook my head again. This case of seduction was becoming complex but I knew I would only be able to solve it by locking eyes with it and falling into its tripping game. |
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The more I attempted to understand it, the more I found myself playing its game. |
Conscious and unconscious sources
I do not, of course, believe that photographing reflections in shop windows is a groundbreaking or truly original thing. My contribution to the genre, and to seduction, is a little more subtle and made of a number of elements combined. When extrapolating the images, however, and looking only at them in the context of art, it is quite useful to locate sources. I knew they were there but I could not identify them until Lorens showed me his wonderful Lee Friedlander book. There they were. Friedlander’s series in Like a one-eyed cat:
What was useful about unlocking this piece of my unconscious (the kind Lorens and I chatted about) was that not only the detail of the information was useful for my PhD – as it will inform the analysis of my practice –, it also revealed things about my photos that I hadn’t seen before. Friedlander’s images are often typified as self-portraits. In my photos, the body that appears on them is mine but I don’t relate to it. At least for now; we’ll see what happens in the gallery space. Thinking of them as kind of self-porttraits, of which all art has something, is interesting in relation to certain things on seduction and narcissism I have written about. For this, as well as for showing me the second volume of his thesis and, with it, a way into analysing images where screen and space are central, I have to thank him.
Laura Gonzalez (born Bilbao, Spain) is an artist and academic. She lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland. 
