How do we see what we look at?

Christopher Williams' three part exhibition Production Line of Happiness, now at the Art Institute of Chicago through May 18th, includes extensive selections from Williams’s ongoing project, For Example: Dix-huit Leçons sur la société industrielle  begun in 2004.  The title of this portion of the exhibition, appropriately located in the architecture and design galleries on the second floor of the Modern Wing, translates to Eighteen Lectures on Industrial Society.  It frames the internal structures of photography and design, pulling into focus insider knowledge which insiders typically don't deem interesting enough to put on display. But a laying bare of, or calling of attention to the inner workings of instruments and methodologies employed by visual communications practitioners reveals larger systems filled with workers working to create the images we consume.  For example, When I see a cross section of a camera I see the genius of it's design and engineering, I see the craftsmanship and precision with which the pieces were manufactured and then assembled together. And I see the myriad choices made available to the photographer using the instrument—choices regarding focus, depth of field, and exposure etcetera. The lenses alone are worth marveling at. I also sense the history of experimentation, which lead to finding the relationships between these myriad options, and the various components of the mechanism itself. No one is born knowing how to operate a camera like this, nor how to manipulate color and light to express an idea. The complexity of the instrument demands a period of education, and inculcation into the medium of photography as an agency for visual communication. 

In their own ways the methodologies used by the model, and by the stylist, and by the lighting technician are all every bit as complex as the machinery of the camera. I'm not sure I would have been able to arrive at this understanding without seeing these camera cross sections interspersed with the other images that reveal typically-hidden views. For example an image of a woman photographed from behind reveals not only the calloused bottoms of her feet, but also several binder clips fastened to her garments so as to make them appear snug and smooth from the front. This calls my attention to the choice of angle that the photo is taken from, and how that works hand in hand with the choice of placement for those binder clips. This photograph is a very subtle subversion of a conspiracy between these two practitioners that must exist in order to show the viewer only one perspective. I am so used to reading the content of photographs as they are "meant" to be seen, that these very restrained indicators of propaganda may have been inscrutable to me without multiple, explicit references to the inner-workings of the camera. 

Likewise, when I find myself stooping down slightly in order to "see" the photos on the wall, I am made aware of a difference I perceive between the height at which these works have been hung and the height at which I am used to seeing works hung in museums and galleries. (I am even noticing a slight, back-burner curiosity within me to know what it's hanging on... wire and hook?) The center of each work feels like it is hung at four feet from the ground. I have grown accustomed to viewing works with the center hung five feet from the ground. For me this is about nose height. Someone else's nose height may be four feet from the ground. But whose? Christopher Williams? A curator from AIC? A curator from MOMA?  An AIC preparator? I am now looking at a work of art with an awareness of the process by which someone had to measure, level, hammer, hang... How was this height arrived at and by whom?

I don't know that these exact burning questions of mine were necessarily intended by the artist, but the fact that I have them results directly from my awakened awareness of the instrument and methodology inner-workings that were harnessed to form the images I see. Williams simultaneously masters and exposes this meticulous process of image-making in such a way that everything I see, I look at as part of the piece, even the billboard advertising it... a portion of which, incidentally, lies cross-sectioned on the floor, with a clear view of the raw lumber and hardware holding it all together.