Something to Look At

Here's a photo by Cristina de Middel that's getting a very very small amount of shade thrown on twitter by the usual we-hate-Magnum #photoland cabal-of-three-dudes.

It is called "Confusion of the Pipe" and it's from a series and a book, called "Midnight at the Crossroads" which is about the spread and evolution of certain African religious practices.

In it we see someone who presents as a young Black person with what appear to be two pipes emitting bluish smoke stuck in their ears. Their eyes are slightly bloodshot. There are two stars on their top. They stare with a certain force at the camera. That's pretty much it. It's a very simple photograph.

A closer examination reveals that at least one of the pipes is not in fact stuck in the subject's ear, suggesting that the pipes are in fact mounted behind their head. The pipe stems on both sides of the head appear slightly too high to be in any ear canals. This raises the question of whether it's a poorly executed illusion, or whether we're supposed to understand the pipes as behind-the-head, rather than in-the-ear. There is an ambiguity here, but there is at least a clear nod to "pipes in ears" here.

The juxtaposition is absurdist to the point of opacity to my, western, eyes. Given the context in which the picture appears, we could reasonably speculate that it represents some religious or quasi-religious ceremony. Certainly pipes and smoking appear in at least some substantial offshoots of the religious practices de Middel is investigating. The title also suggests a reference, though, to Magritte's painting of a pipe, The Treachery of Images, which in turn suggests a maybe-too-highbrow commentary.

The absurdity, to my eyes, suggests that the subject is being made fun of, is being placed into a silly position and photographed. The subject's gaze, on the other hand, suggests a seriousness which speaks against that. I am necessarily uncertain about how the subject feels about the situation, and being photographed in it.

Anyways, the consensus among people who already hate de Middel is that the picture is absolutely racist, and that's all there is to it.

Let us back up and think about the larger context a little. de Middel and her husband Bruno Morais undertook the study of a diaspora, tracing the routes and evolutions of certain West African religious ideas and practices that have spread across a large portion of the world (largely as a result of the slave trade.)

The standard modern idea here, that these stories are best investigated and told by insiders, immediately runs into trouble. There are no insiders. There is nobody who is "inside" every aspect of this tremendously broad diaspora, the only way to tell this story by necessity involves outsiders. One hopes that de Middel and Morais collaborated closely with insiders in each region, in each enclave, but I have no way of knowing whether or not they did.

So, what about the photo? Well, it strikes me as an archetype of a certain kind of Religious Photo, a kind which by design baffles the outsider, which explicitly "others" the subject. It is intended to be illegible to outsiders. See, for instance, this photograph by Khadija Saye (who tragically died in the Grenfell Tower fire:)

Nobody would claim this photograph is racist, but that it only because the person who made it was herself a person of color. It is of exactly the same type, it presents a ritual as a mystery. Presumably Saye and members of her community would find it perfectly legible, but I do not, and I submit that I am not supposed to find it legible. I am supposed to find it puzzling, mystifying.

There are surely loads of Victorian-era photos of Mysterious Religious Ceremonies one could dredge up, and there are plenty of photos of American Snake Handling religions, and so on. There's a long and storied history of "look at this crazy religious shit" photos.

The difference, as near as I can ascertain, is that de Middel's photo does not actually document any existing practice. It references a number of things (perhaps Papa Legba's pipe smoking, and some folk-medicinal practices of blowing smoke in to ears, that kind of thing) while also referencing Magritte, and also the trope of the "crazy religious shit" photograph.

de Middel is offering us not a document as such, but a signifier.

"Confusion of the Pipe" can absolutely be read as a racist picture. It is explicitly, to my eye, "othering" the subject. It refers to lots of other pictures which "other" the subject.

In the same way, Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" can be read as simply anti-Irish. The literal text is absolutely anti-Irish, there isn't the slightest ambiguity about it.

This is the essential risk of satire, and satire-adjacent criticism. It is based on a thing which people are likely to object to, that's the point. If the author and the reader manage between them to do a bad job making sense of the "criticism" part, the base will still stand, and then things can get pretty ugly.

Does de Middel succeed in critiquing the stereotypical "lookit the freaky shit Africans get up to" tropes? Well, I don't have any trouble reading it that way. I can make sense of the critique part, but then I've been thinking about these things off and on for quite a while now.

The reference to Magritte can help us out here, Magritte's picture is called "The Treachery of Images" and there's literally a whole theory around it. We are, once we make that pretty obvious connection, immediately aware that we're not supposed to take de Middel's picture literally. Again, it is not a document but a signifier and what it signifies is not what's literally in the picture.

The breadcrumbs urging us to look and think more deeply are pretty clear, here. Insofar as the word "satire" applies here, the satire is fairly broad. Which, you know, doesn't mean you have to follow the breadcrumbs. If it's just not working for you, well, so be it.

But here we have the usual thing:

The picture admits multiple readings. To insist on only one reading as uniquely "valid" is naive. By all means, read the photo as racist, or as a selfie of a young person goofing for instagram, or as a metaphor for cheese. It's fine. But do not confuse your singular reading as a critical understanding of the thing.

A critical understanding of any photo has to acknowledge and seek to apprehend multiple readings.