Seeing is believing...or just seeing?

Joachim Schmid
From his 2007 series, Untitled Portraits:

See this more of Joachim Schmid's work here.

Michael Wolf
From his series, Transparent City:

See more of Wolf's work in this series here.


What is it about photography that automatically drops the viewer into the guilt-ridden position of voyeur? Is it the similarity of the camera's mechanics to the mechanics of the human eye?

While Wolf and Schmid's projects and agendas may be entirely separate from one another, the above images strike a similar chord. They locate the photographer and viewer as voyeur, and the person in the photo as the object of the voyeuristic gaze.

The large pixels obscure the image, and in doing so, mimic an out-of-focus gaze, drawing our attention to our own act of seeing and perceiving, and to our status as viewer and creator of the image in front of us. The enlarged pixels in the frames reference human optical capacity, as well as the mechanical operation within the camera itself. They reference the viewer and the camera together and underline the act of seeing and the creation of the image itself.

Our status as viewer only exists in the hierarchical relationship between viewer/viewed. Both Schmid and Wolf create a binary relationship in which the picture plane draws a crystal-clear boundary between photographer/subject and viewer/viewed. In this relationship, the hierarchy is such that the photographer is not simply an unassuming viewer, but a voyeur. The voyeuristic act is created as soon as the control of the image is placed in the hands of the viewer, rather than the subject.

In Schmid's case, I think his work references traditional portraiture as well as past photographers' large scale portraiture (think Thomas Ruff's large-scale portraits of his classmates)....but by creating pixels, Schmid draws attention to the photo AS a photo. As an object, as a creation by an author, rather than an unobscured and true representation of an individual. It is a representation of representation and of the act of seeing. Schmid pulls the rug out from under the viewer, forcing us to recognize our status on the near side of the picture plane.