The Eternal Return: Life, Death, and the Screen
A Summary
Cindy Sherman, Untitled #357 (2000). Color print, 30 # 20 inches. Courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
In The Eternal Return: Self‐Portrait Photography as a Technology of Embodiment, Author Amelia Jones explores the relationship between life and death in portrait photography. Where in order to achieve immortality – the living must become an object.
"The photograph,” says Jones “is a sign of the passing of time […] that what we see in the [photograph] no longer exists as we see it: it is a sign, again, of our inexorable mortality” (Jones, 2002).
Film theorist Christian Metz described photography as a form of abduction – which takes its subject, “out of the world into another world, into another kind of time,” further, cutting off “a piece of [the subject], a fragment, a part object, for a long immobile travel of no return” (Jones, 2002).
Jones further elaborates on this with the concept of the Screen – based on Jaques Lacan’s What is the Picture (1964). Screen being used to describe the relationship between the viewer, the subject, and the self, and how they relate to one another. In Lacan’s words: “the photograph is a screen, the site where subject and object, self and other, intertwine to produce intersubjective meaning”.
Jones also describes the process of subjectification – where the viewer will often identify with, and project themselves into the image of the subject. That through this human connection and self-identification, we insert ourselves into these still images, and inject life back into them – thus, the subject “becomes animated” once again.
Finally, Jones describes the self-portrait as a form of performance art. That while it may seem less obvious than – the self portrait is also a form of mask. That the search for individuality, we often look for it in someone else. As the subject, in Lacan’s words – “Maps himself in the imaginary capture” of the viewer’s gaze.
Thus, although they may appear static – through the process of mask, screen, and subjectification – the photograph also becomes a form of passage – in which both the subject and viewer experience an “eternal return”.
Citations:
Jones, A. (2002) The “Eternal Return”: Self‐Portrait Photography as a Technology of Embodiment. The University of Chicago Press. (Accessed: May 6, 2022)
