“Heisenberg’s Snapshots”

ESSAY BY John Browning

Photography is about collecting accidents, chance collisions of time and technology. But few are more accidental than the photographs exhibited here.

These photographs were created by a machine – a Fujitsu photo-printer. They are the result of some subtle bug. Nobody knows why they appear, and despite the best efforts of the machine’s technicians, nobody has been able to recreate them. They just come, the machine’s “decisive moments”, one every few months, sliding out beside people’s snapshots into the trays of a photo lab in Rome.

For us, the uncertainties of the photographs’ origins make them all the more evocative. They don’t look merely random. But whatever design and intent lies behind them is far beyond our powers to understand. And the fact that we nonetheless try to “understand” the photographs – knowing it to be impossible – involves us further in the beauty.

This dilemma raises some basic questions about photography. Is it honestly an art, or another form of curating and collecting, like bringing home sea-shells? Does the medium’s power to touch our emotions result from revealing the subject, or ourselves? And if we really understood, truly and objectively, what a photograph is about, would it seem more or less beautiful?

The evidence of these photographs is that uncertainty matters; that some element of uncertainty enhances the perception of beauty, and may even be essential to it. Hence the title of the exhibit: Heisenberg’s snapshots.

In his “Uncertainty Principle”, Werner Heisenberg demonstrated that an essential element of uncertainty lies at the core of all our perceptions of the physical world. So these photographs suggest, in their own small way, that uncertainty lies at the heart of our perceptions of the aesthetic world as well.

But the photographs also suggest a simpler and more basic truth. Beautiful things are, well, beautiful. And even as we ponder philosophy and aesthetics we’re still waiting by the machine, hoping for another accident.

“Heisenberg’s Snapshots”

Presentation of the exhibition in New York, 2002

The exhibition features a new series of photographs that the artist did not take with his camera. Neither did he conceive them. Mario Santoro-Woith discovered these i mages among people’s snapshots in a state-of-the art industrial photo-printer owned by a commercial lab in Rome. As the lab technician struggled with this randomly occurring error, the beauty and untraceable origin s of these prints struck the artist.

The artist named these “erroneous” photographs “Heisenberg’s Snapshots” after the Nobel Prize-winning physicist known for his “Uncertainty Principle” theory, which argues that there is an area outside the rational and explainable, a zone that proves crucial when studying very small particles such as atoms and their nuclei.

The significance of “Heisenberg’s Snapshots” lies not only in their beauty-created-by-chance, but also on their challenge to the very idea of what constitutes photography itself. Photography’s artistic value has been debated ever since its invention. A photographer’s creativity is not always determined by the fact that he or she chooses an image and takes it with his or her camera. According to Santoro-Woith, “great photographers like Ugo Mulas always leave an area of ‘unexplored effects’ open to interpretation. Or, as photographer Garry Winogrand once put it, p hotograph ‘ is a way of living, not about taking pictures.’ “

Through this new discovery, Santoro-Woith explores his long-time interest in the relationship between fine art photography and photography as a record of everyday events. “Those who are truly creative never miss the fleeting moment, the thing they thought, they saw, or felt. Harnessing the unknown , ” says the artist. In recognising the creative process of a machine, Santoro-Woith opens his mind to the expanded possibilities of fine art photography .

Along with these non-duplicable snapshots, this exhibition also includes an earlier series of color abstract photography by the artist, the subjects of which are everyday materials and environments.

Born in 1968, Mario Santoro-Woith began photographing still-life compositions at the age of fourteen. He earned advanced degrees in visual anthropology at universities in Rome and Munich , while also working at Studio Galletti, a well-known photographic studio in Rome. In the early 1990s, Santoro-Woith traveled for diverse humanitarian organizations to document emergency situations in Angola, the former Yugoslavia, Uganda, the Philippines and Peru. In the following years, Santoro has worked and exhibited in the field of experimental photography, gaining widespread recognition. His solo exhibitions have included a prestigious show at the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland (1998). M.Y. Art Prospects has presented Santoro-Woith's work at Kunst Koln (2000) and Art Miami (2001).

PHOTOGRAPHY
A new frontier

Essay by Breda Ennis

When the machine becomes the ‘photographer’ - how do you react. Impossible!! Machines are controlled by men. They do not take initiatives. They have no free will. They have no vision.

They are not creative. SO WHAT HAPPENED HERE!!

The machine decided to take photography into a new dimension. It tried to be provocative, ‘I can do better than the man who takes his snapshots’ Or is the machine trying to push the photographer to be more creative – is it fed-up always turning out prints which are well behaved.

SO HOW TO EXPLAIN THE NON-EXPLAINABLE. Look at Heisenberg. What was he trying to say - That there is an area outside the rational and explainable which must be considered, even if it is not possible to explain or define. His theory of ‘uncertainty’. Is this the area where creativity comes from

Of course not - but the creative artist or photographer those who are truly creative, never miss the fleeting moment, the thing they thought they saw or felt. Harnessing the unknown. So the machine here says ‘ BUT I WANT TO BE A PART OF IT’. So what are you going to do – switch off the machine and think about it. Then it comes to you that maybe the machine has a sense of humour!

And there is of course the question of color!! Is it possible that the machine has a better color sense than me!! Here is the provocation. The liner harmony of coloured horizontals! Who decided how wide the coloured sections should be. THE MACHINE. Think back to those elaborately detailed linear works by Paul Klee? Take a look at the perfection of Malevich and Mondrian. Are they the kings of straight lines? Yes they are – because even they were working in the unknown!

So we come to the Soul Does the machine have one – of course not. In reality it was the photographer who recognized the ‘bizzare’ behaviour of the machine. What the machine produced, in its own crazy way, would have had no sense if the photographer had not recognized the peculiar behaviour of the machine!!.

Great Photographers, like Mulas, have always left an area of ‘unexplored effects’ open to use and interpretation. Winogrand said ‘photography is not about taking photographs’ This is one side of a multi-sided argument.

In reality all the factors converge – even if some of the factors are UNCERTAIN.

HEISENBERG’S SNAPSHOTS

Interview with Mario Santoro - Woith

How this project was born?

One day day I went to visit my friend Salvatore who owns a photo lab. Salvatore used to be a photojournalist before establishing this lab. His lab is very unusual in Rome because he continues to update the equipment. He is interested in the latest technology as an adjunt to the creative work of his clients.
The relationship between me and Salvatore is very stimulating for each. Talking with him I learn about the latest technology and what is possible. From me, he learns what could be done with that technology. Our conversations reminds me that in Ancient Greece the concepts of art and technology were combined in the word Art.
That day Salvatore was struggeling to find out what caused one of his machines to create an error. While he was at the computer keyboard I went to look at what the machine had produced to cause such commotion. What I saw was something very beautiful. The print that I saw that day was the first one of this new project.

What are the references to this work ?

Many artists have been taking found objects, changed the context and presented us with Art (Jason Sealey, John Chamberlain).

How this project relates to the specific field of Photography?

In the beginning many did not consider photographers artists because it was said that their camera took a picture of reality and just copied it. That the photographer just “pushed the button”. Later it became clear that the photographer’s point of view, angle of sight and darkroom choices were indeed very creative. Some photographers placed cameras in a stationary position and allowed the shutter to open and close. From the contact sheet one or two images were choosen and presented to the public. From time to time viewers have been presented with the entire contact sheet (Gary Winograd). Here I have allowed the machine to produce something that all of us would agree is quite beautiful.
So here my eye as an artist has recognized a piece of art. This continues to be photography as a result of the use of photographic paper, photographic process and creation under the auspicies of a photographer and a photojournalist. This work ads to our concept of photography new spaces, new concepts, new meanings.
Another classic critic of photography is that it must have a purpose, a use, it must satisfy a request. So any use of photography that has a use is acceptable. For example portaits is fine, as well as documentary photography or still life, etc. By thinking this way it is clear that a photographer can be an artist as a woodcarver while making a chair is an artist or an artisan. Photographers who work different than that, are just eccentric.
Photographing the smoke of a cigarette is definitely useless or can be seen as thinking outside the box.
My role as an artist is to see or create beauty outside the limitations of labels. Here will be surprise new ideas and, I hope, a contribution to beauty.
This new work is a next step to a reflection on Art. This is photography that has been created without my camera, there is no subject and it is the result of the randomness that Heisenberg speaks about.
Meaning and Aesthetics of this work. The aesthetic of this work relates to the randomness of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principles.