Guernica Re-Visited

Andre Bazin's statements about the reality in painting and photography are based on the "need for the reality and the illusion". In his example of Picasso, he states that Picasso abandoned the need for the reality and takes his place in the realm of modernity. For Bazin, Picasso kept himself away from the "sin" of photography, and also the illusion of the attempt to "reach the reality" performed by Baroque artists. In photography ,the viewer acts like the image that she/he watches is "real", even the frame is chosen by the photographer.

Guernica, by Picasso

Bazin's ideas about this "need for reality" can be discussed with Peter Witkin's sense of art photography. Peter Witkin is an American photographer, famed by his " grotesque" visual language. In his photographs, he focuses on dead bodies, symbolic approaches towards gender, politics and religion. He switches the perception of "normal" knowledge, and he creates stunning an "unacceptable" scenes. The corrupted and twisted human bodies, and their unnatural placements in the compositions create a chaotic visionary. In his photographs, he creates a new form of reality.

While defining Peter Witkin's understanding of concept, Bazin's example of Picasso will be the subject of discussion. One of Witkin's famous works, named "Guernica Variations" is a re-production of Picasso's Guernica. In Picasso's painting, the abstracted cubic forms of object can be seen and considered as a new perception to the reality, as an artistic and modernist approach. In this case, Witkin's Guernica has the same tendency: a "real" animal head is on the middle of the screen. However, the viewer cannot perceive this animal head as he/she "knows" it in the real manner: the animal head is converted in a cubic way, just like Picasso's perception. The animal head is projected in the side view. The left side of the animal head has two eyes, the other part is not shown. No one will be able to recognize the other part, their perception is mis-leaded by the twisted vision of the left side. In this manner, one can argue that even it is photograph or not, the approaches of Picasso and Witkin is deforming the sense of reality.

Guernica Variations, by Peter Witkin

In this case, fundamentally, it can be said that the reality is a system of manners for knowing things, and the decisions to perceive.