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The relationship between the medium of photography and Video in constructing people's identity in Gillian Wearing works

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Gillian Wearing (born 1963) is a British artist who got recognition through The Turner Prize in 1997 and exhibitions held all over Europe, United States and Britain. Wearing uses photography and video to share her thoughts and ideas. Her work is characterized as a kind of documentary, which does not intend to be impartial, of the popular culture of her generation in Great Britain using photography and video as a way of registration of people’s thoughts and issue’s about life. More than pictures and video records, her work is meaningful by its action.
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70
The relationship between the medium of photography and
Video in constructing people’s identity in Gillian Wearing
works
Patricia Amorim da Silva1
Gillian Wearing (born 1963) is a British artist who got recognition through The
Turner Prize in 1997 and exhibitions held all over Europe, United States and
Britain. Wearing uses photography and video to share her thoughts and ideas.
Her work is characterized as a kind of documentary, which does not intend to
be impartial, of the popular culture of her generation in Great Britain using
photography and video as a way of registration of people’s thoughts and issue’s
about life. More than pictures and video records, her work is meaningful by its
action.
The artist deals with life stories as in her work called Signs that say what
you want them to say and not signs that say what someonelse wants you to say (1992-
1993).
This work consists in a series of portraits of people, who the artist got
on the streets in London, holding a paper where is written what they should be
thinking at that moment. To have a picture of yourself taken is very common
1 Candidate for the Master of Fine Art Degree University of Northampton—Northampton, 2012.
Figure 1
Gillian Wearing. I’M DESEPERATE from the series Signs
that say what you want them to say and not signs that say what
someonelse wants you to say (1992-1993), c- type print mounted on
aluminium, 44,5 x 29,7 cm, 17 ½ x 11 ¾ in.
[http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/gillian-
wearing]
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THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE MEDIUM OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND VIDEO IN (...) PATRICIA AMORIM DA SILVA
as you deal with it all the time that you need a document as a prove of identity,
but the difference here from Gillian Wearing’s work is that she shows the most
hidden thoughts and particular characteristics of people’s personality, what is
part of their identities. Actually Wearing is not interested only in photographic
portrait but through the camera she subtly invades people’s privacy concerned to
their personality. It shows how the media is powerful in the narcissist relationship
between people and the camera. The artist does not want to reveal who is the
person but she wants to go into a deeper discussion concerning the way our
society it is represented. All the participants made an effort to leave their comfort
zone, as exposure themselves it is a difcult task.
Each person will interpret those images in a different way as they affect
people according with their culture background and the context where they are
seen. Therefore the picture can have multiple meanings as each time it is seen the
person will create a different signication for it.
It has a lot of relation with semiotic concepts founded by Charles Pierce
and Saussure, especially when the images signications are involved. The image
represents the signier that when is seen by someone this person adds a meaning
to it, which is called signied. The signier and signied composes a sign. A sign
is an image full of signication. However the sign is produced through social,
historical and cultural context. It is people’s interpretation that gives meaning to
the signs.
The meanings of a work of art are created through the relationship of the
work, the viewer and the context where this work is seen. Besides the work of
art to be load with a meaning already during its production. Then the artwork is
encoded already and after is decoded by the viewer who will consume it.
It is interesting to bring Roland Barthes into this discussion through
his book The Death of the Author (1967) and then question the position of the
artist in her work. For him the author is nothing more then the person who says
“I”, the most important thing is who is going to read the book, it is this person
who is going to give life to the story. As the most important thing for Gillian
Wearing in her photographs is the subjects and not her manipulation on it, for
example, during the process of editing the material recorded. The portraits with
the signs gains another meaning when they are spread to many different places
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THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE MEDIUM OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND VIDEO IN (...) PATRICIA AMORIM DA SILVA
as galleries, they are seen by other people which makes them not an unknown
picture anymore as the photos on identication documents.
According with Barthes (1967) the unity of a text it is not its origin but
its destination that is why it is necessary the death of the Author for a birth of a
reader. The Gillian Wearing’s artworks are only possible to exist because of the
voluntary participation of people. It is through the viewers that the identity of
her work is shown.
The artist is always waiting for peoples’ confessions, for example, Confess
all on video. Don’t worry you will be in disguise Intrigued? Call Gillian (1994).
In this work people could wear a mask hiding them in someone else’s
identity to feel confortable in telling their confessions to the public or to the
camera. The personalities of people speaking mixes with the masks one. The
oral and the visual are mixed. The masks give to the participants the status of
anonymity, so they feel free to tell everything they want. People get emotionally
release. In this work she addresses a big question, which is very inspiring for her
that is: how people always want to neglected their feelings and desires. She plays
the role of a storyteller but giving her personal approach to each story addressing
anthropological aspects in peoples’ lives. It means she addresses particular aspects
of people’s behavior and attitudes toward their lives. During the process of this
work, Wearing gets close to people and even get involved by their stories, there is
no intention to be impartial as a scientic research. She maps the social mass that
Figure 2
Gillian Wearing. Confess all on video. Don’t worry you will
be in disguise Intrigued? Call Gillian (1994). Version II.
Video, monitor, colour and sound; duration: 35 min.,
59 sec. Tate collection.
[http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/wearing-
confess-all-on-video-dont-worry-you-will-be-in-
disguise-intrigued-call-gillian-t07447]
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reects the behavior of the British people at a specic time and period (London in
the 90s).
The Bulgarian-French feminist philosopher Julia Kristeva (1984) says
that identity is formed in the encounter with others. It means that our identity
is expressed when is confronted with other peoples’ identity, as the differences
between each other are evidenced. In this case, it is through the masks that
people’s identity is revealed.
The fortuity is both part of the process of creation as the nal result; there
is no previous planning to be followed or/and no specic result to be obtained.
She depends on people’s participation and sees how the work goes.
According with Sally O’Reilly (2009), author of The Body in Contemporary
Art, the boundary between the human body and the world at large is not very
clear and often difcult to identify. It is not simply the physical barrier of the
skin as both the psychological sphere that exists beyond our basic corporeal
boundaries and the reciprocal relationship between self and context.
Most of the time Wearing is in a comfortable position like holding the
camera and putting someoelses’ life on the spot as she is more interested in peoples’
emotions rather than hers. In a certain way exploiting the subject (“real”- I mean
not famous- people) as she goes in people’s intimacies and reveal it to the public
in a gallery space. Even when she puts herself on the spot for example in Homage
to the woman with the bandage face who I saw yesterday down Walworth Road (1995)
(gure 3), which the artist walks on the street wearing a mask made of bandage,
she appropriates another personality so is not actually Wearing there. That is why
her works are moving between fact and ction. She does not want to hide from
the spectator the re-interpretational and re-presentational character of a specic
situation that called her attention. As William Ewing (2004), from Hayward
Gallery in London, says the cynicism has become standard fare for both producers
and consumers of images. Therefore the contemporary photographers started
working in a spirit of skepticism playing with the illusion and the falsehood.
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Figure 3
Gillian Wearing. Homage to the woman with the bandage face who I saw yesterday down Walworth Road
(1995). Video projection, 7 minutes.
[http://bombmagazine.tumblr.com/post/5451679003/gillian-wearing-homage-to-the-woman-
with-the]
In her work, Wearing tries at the same time to capture the peculiarities of the
everyday people lives as well their relationships, as she did in Take your top off (1993).
This work is a series of photographs of the artist lying down on a bed
with transsexuals. In doing that she is breaking down cultural and social issues
as Wearing is touching in a non-discussible issue. Our society prefers to forget it
instead bringing it to the spot, discuss and care about it. In this work she invades
a private space and bring it to the public.
Wearing chose to work with transsexuals because they experience both
genders at the same time, which means they sexuality is much more open than
everybody else’s. It is a world very different from hers. What makes Wearing
feels uncomfortable with this not conventional situation. The fact they are not
conventional people also attracts her and it could be related with the work of
Diane Arbus when she photographs people with a different appearance, not
common, with a certain abnormality. For example, the portrait A Jewish giant
Figure 4
Gillian Wearing. Take 1 from the
series Take your top off (1993). Three
phtographs, color, 73,5 x 99,5 cm.
Londres, Phaidon, 1999.
[http://phomul.canalblog.com/
archives/wearing__gilian/index.html]
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at home with his parents in the Bronx, N.Y. (1970) (gure 7). Her images are very
disturbing; they established a dialog with the spectator who tries to discover the
personalities behind that faces in a game of subtleties.
Gillian Wearing said that she has always been interested in people more
than in herself. She likes to nd out many facets as possible about people.
Wearing wants to explore the relationship between personal experience
and the social construction of identity (gendered, raced, classed, sexed and others).
Julia Kristeva (1984) conceives the nation as a site of repression, which
the question of identity troubles.
It is interesting how Gillian deals with the photography through her “multiple
faces” and how she deals with the dialog between people and spaces. Her works
come basically from personal questions and people’s everyday lives. She goes
beyond the images, but deep in psychological and behavioral proles.
Photography had been used during history, especially in the nineteenth
century when it was created, to document social behavior and it is exactly what
she incorporates in her work. The same happens with video, it is just a matter of
paying attention on how we are surrounded by cameras nowadays. Everywhere
that you go, for example banks, stores, elevators, there is a security camera
watching you. What Wearing proposes is do not hide the camera of the spectator
even making the person aware of it and ask for the participation of the public in
revealing their intimacies.
Gillian Wearing’s photographs wants to inform, show us about “real”
(not famous) and at the same time eccentric people’s life and a little bit about the
Figure 7
Diane Arbus. A Jewish giant at home with his
parents in the Bronx, N.Y. (1970). Black &
White photograph.
[http://diane-arbus-photography.com]
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THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE MEDIUM OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND VIDEO IN (...) PATRICIA AMORIM DA SILVA
world outside. What she perceives from it. There is no right or wrong, the camera
can make exotic things look near, close and familiar things look abstract, strange.
It allows us to participate while conrming our alienation (Sontag, 1979).
According with the American writer Susan Sontag (1979) Photography
is a powerful narcissistic instrument but at the same time a powerful instrument
for depersonalizing our relation to the world and both are complementary.
Wearing’s work remembers Cindy Sherman regarding to the way the
artist works more specically with portraits incorporating feminine stereotypes.
Sherman uses characters from the Hollywood scene, for example, Untitled Film
Still 58, 1980 (gure 6), incorporating garments, but constructing a biography
on each photo with a touch of subjectivity and is exactly where it is her poetics.
These photographs are not meant to look natural, they are posed, but in a way
as if they were part of the scene from a lm, it drives the viewer to construct
narratives through their photos.
Gillian Wearing (2000) sometimes reference the portraits carried out by
Diane Arbus regarding the way she captures peoples’ emotions in her photographs.
Her work goes deeply into the documentary having people performing their own
lives. To Wearing, video and photography are tools that an open eld full of
possibilities of artistic creation.
It is possible to notice an inuence of television in her work specically
by programs, which were about everyday life, for example, SevenUp, at 1970s.
According to the curator Lisa G. Corrin (2000) from Serpentine Gallery this
program traced the development of a group of British children every seven years.
This program is kind of reality show which the TV invites people to invade other
people’s lives and reect about their own through it. The people’s intimacies that
should be private now it is open to the public.
Figure 6
Cindy Sherman. Untitled Film Still
58, 1980. Gelatin silver print, 20.3
x 25.4 cm, edition 1/10.
[http://www.cindysherman.
com/images/photographs/
UntitledFilmStill58.jpg]
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Therefore Wearing started to try video besides photography. The artist
is really interested in popular culture. For example in her work called Dancing
in Peckham (1994) (gure 5) which shows Wearing dancing in a shopping arcade
without any song playing just the one inside her head. She discusses about public
and private as she put herself in a private moment (dancing) in a public space.
This work expresses the relationship established between the public space and
the Wearing’s thoughts.
Gillian Wearing’s work is a portrait of the British society in the 90s
through people’s unstable emotional and economic relationship. She shows this
society with all its faults, follies and concerns.
There is a constant relationship, dialog between Wearing’s work and the
spectators as they actually see them there. The artwork is about their realities,
desires, anxieties and conicts.
It is a very interesting approach of a British artist, as this nation is known
historically for been reserved. They never talk about themselves. At the same
time people break paradigms with the freedom expressed in the way they get
dressed, the British society is still very conservative related to sexuality freedom
and the naked human body exposure. There is still a lot of censure going on
nowadays. They live at the same time with freedom and repression.
Another two interesting video works of Gillian Wearing are 2 into 1
(1997) (gure 8) and 10 -16 (1997) (gure 9).
Figure 5
Gillian Wearing. Dancing in Peckham (1994). Video,
25 minute duration, Londres, Phaidon, 1999.
[http://phomul.canalblog.com/archives/wearing__
gilian/index.html]
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Both works talk about social conicts. The rst work focus on the
institution called family, as the video shows a mother dubbing the voice of her
twins sons and vice versa. They basically talk about the way they see each other in
a very honest approach, specially the twin boys when they say about her mother.
They are very critical as well. It shows how the relationship between parents
and sons is bankrupt. Wearing also play with the identities, as the voices are
exchanged. It also happens with her work called 10-16, in this work we listen to
teenager between 10 and 16 years old talking about their conicts represented
by an image of an adult. However, Wearing constructs and deconstructs their
identities. She plays with the spectator. It was not the rst time that she uses
actors in her works, as Wearing also used actors in Sixty Minute Silence (1996)
(gure 10).
Figure 8
Gillian Wearing. 2 Into 1 (1997).
Color video, duration: 4 minutes and
30 seconds.
[http://www.theartsdesk.com/visual-
arts/gillian-wearing-whitechapel-
gallery]
Figure 9
Gillian Wearing. 10-16 (1997),
video projection, 15 minutes, ed. 3,
exhibited at Jay Gorney Modern Art,
New York. All images courtesy of
Jay Gorney Modern Art, New York
and Maureen Paley/Interim Art,
London.
[http://bombsite.com/issues/63/
articles/2129]
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It is a video where 26 actors pretend to be part of the British police. They
are posing for the video camera as a formal picture, so they have to be quite for 60
minutes. In this work the roles are reversed, as the spectator will be watching the
police, trying to unravel them. People will look for their weakness, their normal
human being characteristics on that unquestionably pose and status. They will
try to read their personality.
References
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(Accessed Nov. 15, 2012)
BOMB Magazine. http://bombmagazine.tumblr.com/post/5451679003/gillian-
wearing-homage-to-the-woman-with-the. (Accessed Nov. 15, 2012).
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O’REILLY, Sally. 2009 The Body in Contemporary Art. Thames & Hudson Ltd,
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Figure 10
Gillian Wearing. Sixty Minute Silence
(1996). 60 minute silence 1996 Video
single screen 60min Arts Council
Collection, Southbank Centre,London.
http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/
exhibition/turner-prize-retrospective/
exhibition-guide/turner-prize-96-97]
Aurora: revista de arte, mídia e política, São Paulo, v.11, n.32, p. 70-80, jun.-set.2018
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THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE MEDIUM OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND VIDEO IN (...) PATRICIA AMORIM DA SILVA
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