Visual Analysis - Formal Elements, Content, Composition
The photograph depicts a moment in Vancouver history that took place on 7 August, 1971 known as "The Battle of Maple Tree Square". The image is not an actual photograph of the event but, a re-creation produced over thirty years later on a set that was built to replicate the event. I will discuss the aspect of re-creation later in this essay. For now, I will focus on the formal elements of the work including composition, colour, line, shape and light, as well as the actual visual content of the realistically represented scene to analyse this content for clues as to how the work signifies its message through these visual elements and pictorial codes.
Unlike the usual method of photography where the photographer captures an actual live event where they choose what to include or omit within the frame and how they choose to compose the final image, Abbott & Cordova is completely constructed. Stan Douglas had control over every element included in the image. The entire image is controlled by the photographer. For this reason, like a painting where the artist chooses and has complete control over every aspect of the final image, Abbott & Cordova can be effectively analysed using a traditional visual reading of the formal elements.
The major formal elements of note are line, shape, colour and light. The top half of the picture is filled with two buildings, the red brick building that fills most of the space is the eastern side of the old Woodward's department store, Abbott Street, and an area of bright light in the centre of the photograph that I will come back to later. The columns on the buildings, the lampposts, the chains holding up the awning of the building in the top right corner and all the street markings - lane lines and crosswalk markings - form strong lines that stabilise the image. Even though the photograph depicts a riot, the stability of the lines contributes to a feeling of calmness. There are no curved lines, no swirling chaos. The lines formed on the right hand side of the image by the row of riot police and parked cars also contribute to the solid grid-like stability of the piece. The lines of the sidewalk and the lane markings of the streets contribute to a strong horizontal stability as well and the lines of the crosswalk form a solid square in the centre of the picture that also happens to be highlighted by the brightest part of the image, the "empty centre" that, again, I will come back to later.
The left hand side of the image, where the mounted police have cornered some people in front of the sporting goods store, has the most intense collection of shapes. The red car draws in the eye and then we scan the darkest area of the photograph for clues to the identity of the people it contains. This area of shape and action, that requires the most "looking" is on the far left margin of the picture. In fact, most of the action and most of the people seem to be located in these dark margins. The centre of the image, the brightest area of light with most of the lines either pointing to or receding from this point, is virtually empty. All the colour and most of the large dark shapes occupy the perimeter, the margins of the photograph. Why is the centre empty? The strong lines on the road and the brightest area of the image draw our eyes to this spot, yet it is empty. To read the "story" of the image our eyes must travel around the margins, scan the perimeter. In the immediate left foreground there is another strong concentration of dark shapes and low light value. Again this is an area where a mounted policeman is marshalling people. We cannot tell exactly who these people are. Are they rioting hippies or people who are witnessing the event? Beside all of this action, in the bottom centre foreground are two young children sitting on the sidewalk watching the "cinematic" events take place. One of them has turned his head to watch us looking at him, looking at what he is looking at. To the immediate right of the children the "most violent" action of the scene is taking place as police load a struggling "hippie" into a paddy wagon. The juxtaposition of violence and detached, casually viewing children is an interesting choice.
Many of the formal choices made by Douglas, such as the lighting, the colour and the overall tone contribute to a feeling that the image is too safe, too neat and too ordered. There is an overall absence of threat or violence and the image lacks chaos. All the people in the photograph appear to belong to the "middle class." Children and couples are casually watching the events take place and none of them appear to feel threatened or afraid. There are bystanders who could belong to the traditional working class that lived in the area's rooming houses but it is difficult to distinguish them from the "hippies" and the undercover policemen. In fact, mirroring the triangle effect of the crosswalk lines in the centre of the picture, there are couples and groups of people observing the action almost casually. The two young boys in the foreground that I mentioned earlier form one point of the triangle, a group of observers just to the right centre form another point and the couple just to the left of the centre form the third point. The couple is fairly young looking, they are highlighted by the bright street lamp and the lines of the crosswalk point to them. Is this meant to foreshadow the movement into the area decades later of this type of young, hip demographic? Are they meant to signify the very people who occupy the market condos in the new Woodward's II development? Is the aestheticised landscape of advanced capitalism being mirrored or anticipated by the aesthetic tone of Abbott & Cordova? The colours, tones, lines, light are ordered, aestheticised, composed, still. Looking at Abbott & Cordova one is struck, almost seduced, by its cinematic quality. Are we actually consuming the image - like watching a film; unlike being at the scene, in the moment?
Abbott & Cordova is tonally balanced and contains no areas of intense colour saturation. It could be suggested that no shock of colour, no saturated hues equals no violence, shock, or destabilisation and therefore does not jar the viewer. The perfect lighting, hyper focus (all the image is in focus) is not how the eye would see it. Why this choice? Is Douglas attempting to project an authoritative location? The hyper-reality, hyper-focus of the piece promotes a position of clarity, as if this image (a photograph) presents the truth, or a truth. Hyper-realism, and particularly photography in historical discourse, add to this air of authority, this idea that the "truth" is captured. Overall, the tone and the mood of the photograph is too soft, safe, clean and orderly. The sharp focus, hyper-real look of the image comes across as overly photographic. This choice is likely meant to project an authoritative air of documentary truth that has historically been associated with the medium of photography. These choices also help to foreground the image's own artifice.
The obviously fake photographic image constructed by Douglas versus the positioning of photography historically as documentary truth produces an interesting tension. Douglas’ photo is, essentially, an image without an original; it is a digital composite of numerous shots. This tension between truth, documentary accuracy of the photograph and the fact that Abbott & Cordova was produced on a set constructed away from the actual location is a dialectic that is worth thinking about as Douglas would be aware of this. Douglas may even have done this for strategic purposes. It is worth considering whether or not Douglas set up this opposition deliberately forcing us to consider concepts such as truth and history. The details of the re-created scene are incredibly accurate but the point of view and the hyper-real focus of the photograph are almost physically and physiologically impossible.
The method of production of Abbott & Cordova also raises questions regarding the truth versus simulation dialectic. Douglas constructed a Hollywood-like film set in a lot on the PNE grounds and re-created the event using props and authentic paraphernalia from the period of the early seventies. Just like on a film set, everything was re-created for a simulation of the actual historical event. Douglas had his "film crew" build the streets, sidewalks, and facades of the buildings. Historical and period accuracy was strived for right down to the last details such as posters promoting rock bands, discarded newspapers such as The Georgia Straight, and other minutiae and events dated to 1971. Douglas interviewed thousands of actors and extras for the production, the actors were chosen, and the scene was then "directed." All the roles were carefully cast and performed, and multiple takes resulted in a large databank of images, of which Douglas selected fifty to be digitally composited into the single, final picture that is Abbott & Cordova, 7 August 1971.
Moving away from the method of production and back to the consideration of form and content of the work, another interesting aspect of the analysis of Abbott & Cordova is the choice of point of view. Questions regarding the positioning of the camera(s), who is the viewer, and who is watching come to mind. I am interested in whether or not Douglas purposefully meant to evoke connotations of surveillance. Modern technologies such as CCTV that did not exist in 1971 are invoked in the image. The choice of angle, the shot from a slightly elevated position suggests an angle and a framing of the image that would be seen from the CCTV cameras that are located all around that area of the DTES and the new Woodward's complex. Compared with newspaper and CBC footage of the actual event, the points of view differ significantly. The newspaper and CBC footage of the event present a street level point of view, as if the viewer were actually caught up in the action. This more traditional, straight documentary point of view also suggests a more physiologically natural interaction with the riot. The viewer cannot see everything perfectly and clearly but can only process fragments creating a more psychological response that is arguably more chaotic. The point of view of Abbott & Cordova is much more detached, withdrawn from the street level chaos and, because of this distance, much more measured. Douglas says about his choice of point of view: "as the idea of making a picture of a riot was coming together, I began to look for some kind of model or precedent, a paradigmatic image. I briefly became fixated on a photo of the famous Battle of Cable Street that took place in London in 1936" (Alberro 16-7). The perspective Douglas chooses gives the impression not only of a detached observer, perhaps one of the members of the area's working class surveying the events from a second floor window of a rooming house but also, as mentioned, of the types of surveillance cameras that are now all-pervasive in both private and public spaces alike. The Woodward's II complex embodies this intersection of public and private space as we shall see later. Today, as we live in an unprecedented era of surveillance, all such “public spaces” are heavily monitored with CCTV cameras recording every angle of space. The extension of military technologies to the monitoring and management of urban environments highlights the militarisation of modern police forces in this era of late-Capitalism as well. When considering the difference between police forces responding to current riots and the lightly armed, recognisable as police, police force depicted in Abbott & Cordova, we have to consider how and why this change occurred.
When I first saw Abbott & Cordova in its current location I was struck by its size. Images on such a massive scale do have the power to seduce and impress by this fact alone. Large works, whether a painting or a photograph, imply an importance, an authority. This claim can be supported by understanding the prestige of painting large frescoes during the Renaissance and by the hierarchies of importance allocated to paintings during the French Salon era of the 19th Century starting with the large works of David up until Courbet undermined these rules with his massive, scandalous paintings of peasants and the lower classes. During the so called high point of modernism exemplified by post-war large scale abstract painting, size again was an inseparable consideration when analysing a work for meaning. Post-war American painters painted on an immense scale emphasising the emotional and intellectual greatness of their ideas. Is the size of Abbott & Cordova an attempt to locate itself within the discourse of traditional painting? During the era of the Salon larger pictures were considered more important. Huge history paintings were at the very top of the hierarchy of importance. Is Douglas teasing us with this concept? Could he be critiquing these old hierarchies as well as the romantic myth of Abstract Expressionism and the heroic/genius artist? Another question to ask is, is the size of the work appropriate for the subject matter?
As I will discuss in later sections of this essay, the subject matter of Abbott & Cordova could be seen as banal, a marginal moment in the history of activism in the DTES. Does the scale of the piece have another function? Douglas may not have intended this other function, but as we know, intention of the artist is not the only position that we need to analyse. Does the size contribute to the spectacle that some see Woodward's II as? Is the size another function or signifier of the celebration and promotion of neo-liberal values as the piece occupies such a prestigious place on the location of a "temple" representative of these values? I use the term "temple" to refer to the Woodward's II development as a whole and as materialism and consumerism has replaced traditional religion in a lot of ways this framework of analysis could be useful as we will see later. Does Abbott & Cordova occupy a similar position to that of the church frescoes or even, as Abbott & Cordova is a window, of the rose windows so important to the iconography of cathedrals? Is it a stretch to say the work could function as neo-liberal iconography? I will address these concepts in greater detail in later sections of this essay when I consider the location that the photograph occupies at the Woodward's II complex.
Back to the image again briefly, especially with regards to the "empty centre" and the location of most of the visual elements and action occupying the margins of the photograph we still need to consider the question, why?
In an interesting parallel to the composition of the image that focuses on the margins, the actual intersection depicted in Douglas’s scene was not at the centre of the riots but on its periphery. And arguably, while very important for an urban history of Vancouver, the Gastown riot, within the larger Western perspective of youth demonstrations such as May ’68 or the Levitation of the Pentagon, is relatively minor. The event is related to, and certainly part of, an era of protest and demonstration, but is located on the margins or peripheries of those events. As with much of his work, Douglas uses a “minor” moment in history to point to a much larger history.
(Alter 66).
Some important choices seem worth considering further. The banality of the scene, the action taking place in the margins, the peripheral nature of the composition of the image and the events depicted as well as the presentation of the riot as some sort of spectacle raise further questions. When did a riot become a spectacle? What is Douglas trying to say with this seemingly banal, marginal, peripheral event? This is what Douglas has to say about the actual event:
I consider the demonstrations against budget cuts that we’re seeing in Europe today, or those against the formation of the World Trade Organization a decade ago, or those against the Iraq War in 2003, to be much more serious than what’s depicted in Abbott & Cordova, 7 August 1971. Relatively speaking, the coming together of people in August of 1971 was a frivolous protest—I mean, protesting the fact that they weren’t allowed to smoke pot. But in a larger sense, what the protest was about was the curtailment of civil liberties. And I think that the large gathering in Gastown that day, as light-minded as it might appear now, was enabled by the large antiwar and civil-rights demonstrations of the 1960s. So just as the events that I’ve rendered are at the periphery of the epicentre of the riot, the event as a whole was at the periphery of, but nonetheless related to, the mass demonstrations of the 1960s and early 1970s.
(Alberro 14)
The riots and demonstrations of the 1960's were a turning point in the history of the West. Many things changed regarding the ways protests were dealt with. The militarisation of police forces began, narratives regarding the motivations of protesters and activists shifted to portrayals of them as terrorists. Counter-culture symbols were co-opted by the prevailing dominant ideologies as cool, hip and trendy. Is Douglas suggesting, with Abbott & Cordova, that 1971 is the moment when things really changed? When everything, no matter how significant or minor, became a spectacle? Is this the moment when actual histories ceased to matter as the dominant ideologies just re-contextualise, re-historicise and adjust narratives surrounding actual events? Is Douglas attempting to comment on this phenomenon? The artifice of history - reflected by the artifice of Abbott & Cordova - suggests that re-remembering is often artificial and re-contextualised by time. History is also mediated through visuals, texts, images. History is a series of small events, not always grand, and it is often through the lens of time that narratives emerge. Is Abbott & Cordova part of an "end of histories" critique? Has the institutionalised power of late-Capitalism rendered actual histories as minor and insignificant, a matter of spectacle? Can Abbott & Cordova, 7 August 1971 function as a social critique or does its location mitigate its credibility? This is another very important question that we must consider further.
