Rhetoric of Photography: Material Actants
This week we were tasked with exploring the ways in which "objects, technologies, and networks mediate your experience or how they arrange bodies in space." I found inspiration in the literal and the simple this week by looking at a relatively ubiquitous and unassuming object/technology in American culture: the fence. As a material actant, it's perhaps obvious to see how a fence restricts the ways in which bodies are able and allowed to interact with a s/p[l]ace. But I see rhetorical depth in that simplicity. Because just as the physical construction of the stereoscope forwards a perception of reality that privileges sight to the exclusion of the other senses, I see the fence as embodying and encouraging an worldview predicated on the increasingly insidious ideals of hyper individualism and isolationism. The simple construction of the fence is perhaps a contributing factor to its rhetorical efficacy; it appears to be a natural phenomena. In fact, we often idealize and valorize the American "white picket fence" narrative without considering how it works to our physical, emotional, and social detriment.
Each of these photographs therefore foregrounds and focuses on the material fence itself, thereby making a commentary about the fence's ability to act as a rhetorical agent, bending space and place around it in both a literal and figurative sense. I purposefully altered the aperture to create this effect, intending to confront the viewer with the harsh reality of the fence, which often interrupts the natural flow of landscape narratives, while also leaving the consequence of the fence open to interpretation. (I also purposefully opted to present these images in silverscale as opposed to color for rhetorical effect). Moreover, all the fences are constructed differently but perhaps accomplish the same goal (or do they? I'm not entirely sure at this point). But nevertheless, I did also attempt to capture the texture of each material, which I feel embodies something of its rhetorical essence.
I do, however, want to contextualize one image in this set. The shot of the barbed wire fence has a particularly interesting story. This fence forms the official boundary around the Fairfield Baptist Cemetery in Fairfield, TX; this cemetery, not incidentally, still also functions as the town's "official" black burial ground. If I may offer one potential reading of this particular image: the choice of fencing here seems especially powerful and poignant to me on a cultural and historical level.
