Photographs
by Josef Koudelka/Magnum Photos
Notes
by Robert Delpire
Phaidon Press Limited, London, 1999
"Those who are alive receive a mandate from those who are silent forever. They can fulfill their duties only by trying to reconstruct precisely things as they were and by wrestling the past from fictions and legends."
- Czeslaw Milosz, from Nobel Lecture, 1980
[Note: Struck by the coup de foudre of Prague68, the book I intended to analyze, Stephen asks me, “Why don’t you write about Chaos?” So that is how the large, flat, and impeccably edited and ordered Chaos with begins to take residence in my head. AA]
Part I LOOKING
The
tree picture is different from the other pictures in Josef Koudelka’s Chaos. It
holds the residue of another time, another place. Organic, isolated, bare, you
can find it on page 68, a dark silhouette against a faint covering of snow on
the ground, an enshrouded forest on either side.
It
evokes Exiles
. The hound
in the Parc de Sceaux. A picture burned into the recesses of any photographer’s
mind, now so too the tree. Misty and mysterious, soft whereas the rest of the
book leaves no question about the angular, directional and deliberate choices
of subject. Plain as day, and yet Chaos, the images in it, were at first to me
as impenetrable as the hieroglyphics Robert Delpire refers to in his
introductory notes.
Something
bothers me about this disjunctive tree. God may or may not play dice with the
universe, but Koudelka does not give us a picture without a reason. I become my
own Champollion,
the decoder of the Rosetta
stone, trying to unlock what has always existed. By the end of this process
I’m thinking that Champollion was a wuss.
A
little aside. It is a presumption to add to Delpire’s succinct and brilliant
descriptions in his introductory notes. He has, after all, paid the ultimate
compliment of comparing another European to one of his own, a Frenchman,
Champollion. The Brits might have the rock, but the French have the glory.
Champollion has a plaque in front of his house in Paris - I’ve seen it with my
own eyes. He has an obelisk for
a gravestone in Père Lachaise.
I’ve seen it on Wikipedia. Wow. What man doesn’t want that?
But
the truly grand accomplishment of Champollion is letting us in on the mysteries
of human thought and communication. Aside from the hieroglyphic writing in his notebooks that Delphire describes,
is Koudelka also naturally encoding his pictures with visual hieroglyphics, sharing the language of a visual literacy
wrought by an intense intellect?
What
happens after social order is irretrievably changed, not redirected, but cut
off at the head? How can we understand the fluid dynamic systems of history? In
what way could a very smart and possibly wry photographer reflect on these
questions? And why would he? In a book of abstractions where do you untangle
his affections, his interests?
If
a man so distrusts words, as Delpire informs us, then he does not choose the
title of his book without much considered forethought. This will be my only
presumption about Koudelka. Chaos is not chaotic. It is not disorder, it is not
random, yet it is not predictable over time: it has a precise encompassing
meaning, one that an aeronautical engineer would find infinitely attractive.
For me, not an engineer,
mathematician, physicist, biologist or scientist of any type, it is sometimes hard
to hold even the elemental ideas of deterministic chaos theory in my head
– but for Koudelka, it is part of his mental landscape. Well, it’s
possible.
Part II CHAOS
Chaos describes system dynamics.
Systems that change over time. Above all, it is the study of how the expression
of energy changes as it moves across boundary states, and is especially
relevant for fluid
dynamics and turbulence.
Imagine the ocean at seawalls or the turbulence around airplanes. What chaos
tells us is that systems are deterministic – their initial states hold
the key to how they will evolve, and if there is even a slight change in this
state then the outcome can change immensely. Hence, their predictability is
exponentially difficult (if not faster than exponentially) [Note to self:
approaching Cofer Black’s Orders of Magnitude? Check with “sources”] as we
become removed from the conditions at the onset of the system. Like Britney
Spears.
Chaos represented a huge change from
decades of assumptions – one, that little tiny unexplainable things in
scientific models were just noise, easily ignored, and two, that small
imperceptible changes in a set of conditions would lend to small changes in the
outcome. In large part, scientists were working with the equations that worked –
the linear equations – and not so much working with the ones that were
impossible to show or solve – the non-linear ones. Not necessarily a bad
idea. We got off the ground into airplanes didn’t we?
But even though we got to fly the
friendly skies, there were little things in the back of some scientists’ heads
that were bothering them. With the advent of powerful computers scientists
started running scads of equations and models called iterations, thinking
they would find answers in all this. Lorenz, the guy
credited with the initial development of chaos theory was, in 1961, trying to
solve the age-old problem of figuring out if it was going to rain tomorrow. And
through a tiny error in entry he found something extraordinary – that if
you enter a number to 3 decimal places instead of 6 decimal places, you can get
hurricanes instead of pool parties. It later became known as the butterfly effect.
I can pretty much guarantee that
I’ve screwed something up in this short-changed description, given that I’ve
not even finished the seminal book on the history of chaos theory. It’s James
Gleick’s Chaos:
Making a New Science
(which has been republished by Penguin in a new 20th anniversary
edition). My understanding of chaos is itself chaotic – the more I
understand it, the more it changes. There are other characteristics that have
to be present to define a system as chaotic. Systems can be complex and not
deterministic. On and on.
But the point is not to be an expert
on chaos theory. The point is to understand that as chaos and complex systems
began showing up across disciplines, coming to a head in the late 70s and
forging through the 80s and 90s, they could be mapped and modeled. There are
universalities, no matter if the systems concern population rates of meercats,
pomegranate juice prices, weather predictions, or even war and conflict.
To understand chaos, you have to
understand it visually, as models and simulations, brilliant fractals and phase
space. These are not models of the systems per se, but models of what they do.
“When a scientist looked at a phase portrait, he
could use his imagination to think back to the system itself.”[i]
These visual representations of chaos are part of the vocabulary of Koudelka’s
book. Does it imply a simple bias toward circles and grids, contours and curved
lines, bifurcations and fractal shapes? Or is Koudelka looking at some
recurring issues with not only depth, but also with a different kind of
perception?
Part III SEEING
Oh, the pictures. [Note to self:
Photographers get so pissed if you don’t discuss the actual pictures right
away.]
In case you aren’t looking at the
book this minute, the images are black and white, panoramic, some vertical, one
to three per page, some horizontal, some on facing pages, some all the way
across the gutter. Some spreads have both verticals and horizontals but not on
the same page. Only one horizontal can fit on a page. Linear in that way.
Phaidon pulled out the stops, it’s nicely bound, beautifully printed, and now
that it seems more approachable, it is the perfect size - not too big.
But what are the pictures of? I could describe each image in glorious
detail, but that does not move our discourse. Think equivocal, not didactic. A Poincaré section
shows a crosscut of a system to reveal another form of its structure. Funny how
that reminds me that any photograph is but a reflected cross-section of the system
of the world
.
I
want to be able to point out, say, a grid in an image with a stress fracture,
and imagine the instability and stability of systems of governments, not just
mental states and romantic self-reflections or political protest. I want to use
the language of chaos to chart
ideas.
First, Euclidean geometry is
left behind. Some of us did that in 10th grade, but more explicitly,
the system used to explain the universe for a couple of millennia began to show
inadequacies not only with the coming of Einstein but also with these chaotic
models of things right here on earth. Straight lines and closed circles:
Koudelka finds and places them in the first pages of Chaos. The circles remind
me of the wristwatch
picture in Prague. Is is about a place in time or is it about timekeeping?
In chaos theory you get these lines that go round and round and never quite repeat
themselves…strange attractors…otherwise
they would be periodic and hence predictable.
Grids. Scientists
make models so you see these grids whenever models are introduced. Koudelka
frames cobblestones and walls and apartment houses, and these grids are
forefront – with holes and fractures – or shadowed or in the
background sometimes. But the x and y axis morph to the x, y, and z axes on up,
moving us from linear to non-linear equations.
Bifurcation.
Branching in two. Lines in mathematical models, liquids in experiments. They look
like college basketball brackets reversed. Then they wobble before following a
chaotic trajectory. What does Koudelka give us? Roads, with two tracks. Rail
lines, with two tracks. Always framed in, sometimes curved, sometimes a detail,
sometimes the whole element of the picture. Sometimes there are just highways,
bending back on themselves, almost folding.
Boundaries.
Where things meet, or are divided. The place where you find turbulence, and
hence, chaos. Oh, and the place we might leave determinism and reach a
stochastic state – one that relies on feedback to shape results. Fences,
like the one at Auschwitz,
walls, more walls, more walls, guard rails, nets, roads, rivulets. Boundaries
like these are definitive, but they are where you see the expressions of energy
changing. The lovely image on the cover of a bird sailing over some
geometrically composed wall, clouds floating. I will fall away from the hard
science for a second to be painfully obvious: a photographer must always have a
self-portrait.
Fractals/Self-Organization
Critically. Repetition over scales. In 1982 Benoit Mandelbrot published The Fractal Geometry of Nature
Does
chaos theory inform societal systems? I started at this point, held this idea
in my head. One great thing about living in my little town of Sewanee
is that there is a stone building full of books, the du Pont Library. The other great thing
is that when you want to see someone, you sort of conjure them, and they show
up. So when I wanted to ponder whether chaos theory informs sociological
systems, I can just run into a mathematics professor in the bookstore who
listens carefully, painfully patient, and observes that I may be looking at a
philosophical model rather than a mathematical or physical model. He recommends
Critical Mass
Koudelka
is not using chaos theory or visualizations of mathematical and physical models
to inform a narrative about social theory, the history of science, or even
political history, but chaos theory informs Koudelka’s vocabulary. He is, as
Delpire tells us, “…not the least bothered with narrative”[iii]
but is simply taking pictures. Really f***ing good ones I’d say. History,
another conjured (or at this point is he cornered – one should always
plot an escape route from the bar at mid-winter Down Under parties) professor
tells me, is about isolating events, causes and effects, and not confusing
these causes and effects with chronology.
Certainly with his isolation of subjects, Koudelka is not ignoring
history.
So
where are the people in this book? Maybe they’re not there to distract us from
some larger ideas, as suggested by a biology professor (who appears at a
cookout as if by magic and patiently explains some elusive qualities of chaos.)
Maybe they’re not there because it’s a nod to earlier Czech photographers, Sudek (who also shot
panoramics) and Funke.
Maybe they’re not there because Koudelka didn’t notice them leaving. The linear
elements, the structures – these are artefacts of human existence, so you
can’t really say it’s a book without any people in it.
PART
IV THE GAME
So
the picture of the tree.
It’s still dangling in phase space. Apart. I show it to my husband’s assistant,
a friend who happens to be a geologist with a strong leaning toward biology. [Note: Assistant often
conjured by husband on good motorcycling days.] Shazaam. Suddenly I am rich in
bio information. Notice how with no leaves on it, the oddness of the tree
stands out abruptly. The branches aren’t natural. They all well up from one
place halfway up the tree.
This
small tree has been cut off at some point in time, by man, cow, or mother
nature. When you cut off the main apical branch of a
tree, the hormone auxin (that has been doing two things, directing growth from
this apical tip and suppressing other branches underneath from growing too high
and shadowing light) is eliminated. At the cellular level this tree begins
growing branches again - epicormic
branches start sprouting from any live part of the tree that is left. With some
species of trees, when you cut off the top, the live ring between the bark and
the interior is free to start sprouting branches from the place you’ve cut.
Eventually some of the branches gain prominence, and it is normal for ones on
the outside of the ring to become dominant. Brits, of course, have formalized
this obscure gardening custom and given names to its variations: coppicing and pollarding.
So
here is this tree, in the snow, leafless for the winter, which has been cut or
broken in some way with evidence that new growth transpired. From a literary
standpoint, this encompasses the repeated history of the Czech Republic,
having its destiny sawed off but reborn with an unpredictable but not random
outcome. I walk over to pull the
book out and look at the tree again, to find the page number on which it is
printed. Because you might want to pull out the book yourself and look at this
picture, I need a reference to the page. Does this book have page numbers or
plate numbers? It has, strangely enough for a monograph, page numbers. The tree
is on, page, 68.
Get
out. Is this a joke? Are you playing a game? P. 68? 1968?
Invasion68: Prague
My
only real validation is visual. Turn back the page and there is a fallen column
in Athens across the gutter, the civilization of ancient Greece at my feet.
How
many pages are in the book with pictures? No way. 99. What year was the book
published? 1999.
The pictures
actually start on p. 10, so there are, 89 pages of pictures. 1989? The Velvet Revolution?
No this is crazy. Koudelka is not an illustrator and I am not a Dan Brown
fanatic seeking to find revelations in obscurities. But what is going on here?
p. 89? Airplanes. On a tarmac. There in the background is an airplane,
surrounded by gurneys, not yet ready to take off – and in the foreground
an anchor holds something outside the frame in place. Will the plane be cleared
for takeoff? Or is it really grounded?
I
keep playing this hand. WWII 1945. pp. 44-45. Double page spread. Split down
the middle, signs on the pavement. OK if you are playing a game this one is too
complicated for me – except the signifier of the division of Europe. A
boundary. And what looks like a peace sign made from a coat hanger.
The end of the century and the year of this book’s publication – 1999. It’s hard to remember now after the hindsight of 9/11 why we made such a big deal about 1999.
Pp.
98-99. The ocean against a seawall. If you recall Koudelka ends exiles with an
ocean picture too, no breaking waves but undulations, waves nonetheless. The
ocean however is the ultimate model of chaos. The favorite metaphor for
physicists. The great Feigenbaum
says “…or you stand at a seawall in a storm, and you know that you don’t know
anything.”[iv]
Why? Gleick so concisely explains: “Everyone knows that an enclosed
flow…behaved measurably better than open flow, like waves in the ocean or air.
In open flow, the boundary surface remains free, and the complexity
multiplies.” [v]
The boundary surface remains free.
One
last number: 1914. Franz Ferdinand’s
assassination. I don’t see it. So instead of trying to fit any more ordinal
numbers into my idea of this Venn diagram, I let go and look again. Where are
the changes, the boundaries, where does something first leap out…amazingly
enough you flip through the first pages of the book and see all these Euclidian
representations, circles and lines and cones, until pp. 16-17. The first double
page spread besides the opening image. Shot out walls recede into a doorway.
Bullet holes. The end of WWI? No – that was 1918. Think. Wiki WWI. Oh
f*#!. The Russian
Revolution 1917 – an event that will, in time, have more impact on
the country of Czechoslovakia than WWI…
Sets.
Boundaries. The Czech Republic is after all a boundary state.
PART
V BOUNDARIES
Does
a book like this emerge from a decision to set out to photograph a century of
history and scientific thought? Or does it emerge from a deep space where these
ideas inform your existence, your choice of camera, framing, editing and
sequencing, seeing what works over a long period of time – does it emerge
from your stubborn need to photograph something because it interests you?
We
get caught up in a hamster wheel of thinking that abstractions are emotional
reflections. And for good reason. You look at any Czech at the end of the 20th
century, especially someone who has lived through the Soviet tanks and the
Velvet Revolution, and it would be reasonable to assume anything they express
is speaking about losing vision and drive, and talking about ‘back in the day’
when there was something to protest. Artists, musicians and writers marked its
effect in East Europe: “The
shrieking of nothing is killing – “ David Bowie,
from the song Ashes to
Ashes. Milan
Kundera. No, actually it is Ivan
Klima, Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light
Recall
Koudelka’s opening picture in Chaos of the bird looking at that definitively
Euclidian yet senseless shape, standing halfway between the light and the dark
on the pavement. What does he see there on the line between light and dark?
Gleick gives us Goethe on
writing on history: “This is a hazardous affair, for in such an undertaking, a
writer tacitly announces at the onset that he means to place some things in
light, others in shade.”[vi] The book is
folding in on itself - like a mathematical representation of flow.
I
didn’t understand this arc of history until I started feeling like an exile in
my own country, wondering if we would break away from and lose our civil
freedoms. I don’t think that training as a physicist or biologist could prepare
me to look closely at Koudelka’s Chaos and take some meaning from it as much as
the last eight years of political discomfort.
Koudelka
is engineer, poet and witness. He has embedded scientific thought on history as
a system. He is not showing us the Wasteland
or Suburbia or The Road
[i] James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science, (New York: Penguin 1987), p. 135
[ii] Philip Ball, Critical Mass (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2004), pp. 451-2
[iii] Josef Koudelka, Chaos, (London: Phaidon Press Limited 1999) notes p. 8
[iv] James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science, (New York: Penguin 1987), p. 157
[v] James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science, (New York: Penguin 1987), p. 203
[vi] James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science, (New York: Penguin 1987), p. 342
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