This is the first of a series about flags. I’ll post one per day, for a couple of weeks. These are part of a larger project I’m working on. I hope you like them, and that they are helpful during these days of recovering from the election.
I guess that I’m never too sure what to make of pictures of flags, not that there’s anything inherently wrong with them as a topic, it’s just that I find that nationalism (and its celebration) is something that makes me a little uncomfortable. In the UK, for example, there’s the now almost forgotten problems of colonialism – all of which was carried out with much flag waving and celebration.
As for this shot: and I’m reading this through the ideas mentioned above, I’m drawn to the device that seems to be supporting the flag, and I guess the presumption here is that the flag won’t fly, at least not convincingly, in its absence.
I certainly agree with you about nationalism. This is a very difficult time to be living in the US, a country that I greatly admire. But that;s not why I made these images. I’ve always been bewildered by the American attitude towards flags, and by the myriad ways they use them. The flag is just everywhere. Apparently, it can be used to alter the meaning of almost anything, but people rarely seem to be able to say much about why they display it as they do.
I shot this one because of the support rod that you noticed, but my reading of it was slightly different from yours. I thought that the rod meant that it’s not the actual flag that’s desired, but rather a particular idea of the flag. It must look a certain way.
This reminds me of the moon landings, where they planted a flag that needed a support to make it ‘fly’ without any atmosphere. That always seemed very tacky to me. It’s the sense that the real world flag does not live up to collective ideas about the flag. It’s a kind of denial of reality.
Many times during the election campaign, Bush said “I love our values”. But these “values” are mere ideas about America, not America as it actually is.
I think we’re probably in agreement regarding the actual flag versus the idealised flag, I just didn’t express it all that well in my original comment.
I’ve thought about this a bit more since making my first comment, particularly in terms of my own reaction to flags (in the context of nationalism) and I suspect there are some important differences between the UK and the US. In the US, as best I can tell, the flag is a symbol of pride that might be displayed in a variety of ways. In the UK, flags are wielded rather than displayed, or at least that’s how it seems to me. Up until recently the English flag (the Cross of St. George, not the Union Jack) had become synonymous with right wing extremism (the British National Party for example) but during the recent world cup it seemed to become a less politicised symbol, Nonetheless, my impression is that its use in the UK seems to be along the lines of “I’m English/British and you’re not” whereas in the US it doesn’t seem to me as though its applied in quite the same way.
To me it is something like an appearance or even an apparition, the way it is taken. Almost an emptly clothe with a ghost inside, dancing, so I can understand what you wanted to convey. Siince it is a photo, it is a spectre after all, only here there is a certain anamorphotic effect that shows us the “true value” of an object, as an introduction. The oblique view adopted by the photo(grapher) actually shows us the flag in it’s unheimliche reality. The rod is for me a remnant of the real, that makes the spectre all the more haunting. It’s the only non-flexible in the photo, apart from the frames. This is exactly an image for an introduction, so the rest becomes “tainted” in a way, and rightly so. (to be continued in some other photo).
This is the first of a series about flags. I’ll post one per day, for a couple of weeks. These are part of a larger project I’m working on. I hope you like them, and that they are helpful during these days of recovering from the election.
I guess that I’m never too sure what to make of pictures of flags, not that there’s anything inherently wrong with them as a topic, it’s just that I find that nationalism (and its celebration) is something that makes me a little uncomfortable. In the UK, for example, there’s the now almost forgotten problems of colonialism – all of which was carried out with much flag waving and celebration.
As for this shot: and I’m reading this through the ideas mentioned above, I’m drawn to the device that seems to be supporting the flag, and I guess the presumption here is that the flag won’t fly, at least not convincingly, in its absence.
I certainly agree with you about nationalism. This is a very difficult time to be living in the US, a country that I greatly admire. But that;s not why I made these images. I’ve always been bewildered by the American attitude towards flags, and by the myriad ways they use them. The flag is just everywhere. Apparently, it can be used to alter the meaning of almost anything, but people rarely seem to be able to say much about why they display it as they do.
I shot this one because of the support rod that you noticed, but my reading of it was slightly different from yours. I thought that the rod meant that it’s not the actual flag that’s desired, but rather a particular idea of the flag. It must look a certain way.
This reminds me of the moon landings, where they planted a flag that needed a support to make it ‘fly’ without any atmosphere. That always seemed very tacky to me. It’s the sense that the real world flag does not live up to collective ideas about the flag. It’s a kind of denial of reality.
Many times during the election campaign, Bush said “I love our values”. But these “values” are mere ideas about America, not America as it actually is.
I think we’re probably in agreement regarding the actual flag versus the idealised flag, I just didn’t express it all that well in my original comment.
I’ve thought about this a bit more since making my first comment, particularly in terms of my own reaction to flags (in the context of nationalism) and I suspect there are some important differences between the UK and the US. In the US, as best I can tell, the flag is a symbol of pride that might be displayed in a variety of ways. In the UK, flags are wielded rather than displayed, or at least that’s how it seems to me. Up until recently the English flag (the Cross of St. George, not the Union Jack) had become synonymous with right wing extremism (the British National Party for example) but during the recent world cup it seemed to become a less politicised symbol, Nonetheless, my impression is that its use in the UK seems to be along the lines of “I’m English/British and you’re not” whereas in the US it doesn’t seem to me as though its applied in quite the same way.
I’m looking forward to the rest of the series.
To me it is something like an appearance or even an apparition, the way it is taken. Almost an emptly clothe with a ghost inside, dancing, so I can understand what you wanted to convey. Siince it is a photo, it is a spectre after all, only here there is a certain anamorphotic effect that shows us the “true value” of an object, as an introduction. The oblique view adopted by the photo(grapher) actually shows us the flag in it’s unheimliche reality. The rod is for me a remnant of the real, that makes the spectre all the more haunting. It’s the only non-flexible in the photo, apart from the frames. This is exactly an image for an introduction, so the rest becomes “tainted” in a way, and rightly so. (to be continued in some other photo).