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Subhash Jaireth
Photographs of Authors in
Australian Book Review
It is common knowledge that these biographical notes are provided by authors themselves. Was the photo also provided by Don Anderson?
In the photo Don looks at me from behind his glasses with seriousness and sincerity fitting for an intellectual and a scholar. No, he is not looking through the glasses. They rest quite low on the crest of his nose, making space for the eyes to be visible without the glasses. The glasses are no longer what they are meant to be. They have turned into a sign, a piece of jewellery, part of a make-up, a framing device. So are the books and shelves which stand out of focus behind him. The focus is on him, his face, eyes and his slightly stooped shoulders.
What is his photo doing in this essay? Why is it there? What does it perform for the essay and for the author and for that matter for a reader like me? Is it an authenticating device? It does ensure a presence of the author, the originator of the text, the source of its meaning and intention. It supplies to the text a centre of gravity towards which the centripetal forces of the text tend to converge. However, if the photo imparts a presence of the 'real' to the text, through the text, the photo also acquires a discursive halo, a source of centrifugal forces that disperse the photo's centralising intent.
I saw Don Anderson a year ago in a conference at Sydney University where he was chairing a session. In the photo he looks much younger. Is this because this is an old photo or is it because he is in a photo? We know that, to some extent, it is in the nature of a photo to make its subject 'photogenic'. In the April issue of ABR there is a similar photo of a much younger Marion Halligan that accompanies her essay. I have seen this photo in other magazines as well. In this photo books constitute the foreground. There is a pair of glasses resting on the back of a book. I suspect a table lamp is placed just outside the photographic space, the light from which illuminates her face. The face is thus the iconic focus of the photo.
In the August issue there are several photos of authors (twelve out of a total of twenty-six photos). Les Murray's photo is like what Les Murray's photo should be. This is how he has been shown and seen. This is how he has been imaged and imagined: rough, honest and blunt. His photo performs a role similar to the one he has been performing in real life. Peter Porter's portrait on the next page also brings to us a Peter Porter we have learned to see: soft, kind, urbane and romantic. He does not look at you through the camera but at the world beside and around you. The photo-portraits of Peter Carey on page 15 and Bernard Cohen on page 67 show quite similar visual structuring. They are not looking at you straight but have turned their faces slightly towards you. The camera seems to think that a position half way between a frontal and a side view is most fitting for them. That position makes them more 'photogenic'.
Why do these photos show their subjects so young and 'beautiful'? Time is passing. The years have gone by but the photos always show them young and fresh, happy and smiling. There is a pattern here which is quite similar to the one we see in police dramas such as The Bill. In this soap, as in many other similar serials, the criminals are always episodic characters. They appear in an episode, commit a crime, are apprehended, jailed, brought to justice and disappear. The continual disappearance of criminals and the continual reappearance of police- men and police women are complementary and reflect, to some extent, the power attached to the presence of police as an institution. The criminals don't have faces -- only the police have a face and a character. Is something similar happening with the photos of authors? Is this an exercise to deny or overcome the `death of the author'?