Renaissance in Harlem
Daniella Géo
Practiced long before, it was only in the 1930´s that documentary photography met its social moment - a conditional for the definition of its function and diffusion, the perfect ambiance and timing that prepare society to accept it - having its term stated (1) and finally emerging as a genre. Since then, its theory has been written and re-written, sometimes even contradictorily, evolving toward what it is today: an approach that finds in the series its possibility of communicative autonomy; that makes use of diverse aesthetics forms; that demands from its authors deep involvement, knowledge and investment of time through research and systematic recording of images from the real, and therefore can offer a sophisticated use of visual language capable to leave behind the outdated thought that opposed document and art, not only for its more and more frequent double value of usage but also for its detachment from the idea of the image as a reproduction of a fact - through the questioning of its utopias and/or through the high-lightening of its representational characteristics by the author´s concept.
After Charif Benhelima´s Welcome to Belgium (2) (2002) - which could be placed as a kind of "private realities" (3) and compared to Robert Frank's The Americans (1958) for its psychological complexity, and a more subjective and corrosive form of depicting society as well as for its difficulty to find its own social moment -, the artist launched a turning-point yet a continuation of his documentary approach and creative process by the use of the Polaroid 600 (camera and film).
The utilization of this amateuristic medium was decisive, a self-proposed challenge that impelled Benhelima to play with the perception to manipulate the real - as the Polaroid 600 does not allow much control - in an arrangement with his already known clever choices of visual elements and the given relation between them. But one should not expect to see the Polaroids - a medium that is unique in essence - as for Benhelima they were a support, being each image presented in its idealized format. In Harlem on my mind, the artist does more than to question photography, he makes use of its characteristics in his own favor -; what matters for him is the resulting image itself.
Benhelima embarked in a kind of countercurrent of nowadays trends in photography - the digital medium and the `German school´ color landscapes and portraits with a document-like-aesthetics - to develop a highly personal style, documenting the streets of Harlem whereas distancing even more from the notion of evidence in order to deal with the unsteadiness and changes that he experienced and witnessed.
Having lived in New York for three years, Benhelima got confronted to a certain inversion of roles that he was not used to. For the first time his nationality and culture was not opposed by his given name; he was seen as he felt, a Belgian, but ironically he embodied the notion of discrimination face to that black community. He was once more an outsider, but one with a defined identity, what generated a feeling of transition and encouraged him to project it onto what he believed to be a so-called African-American, a group that is in a constant effort to shape its image.
The sorrows and especially the instability are represented in most of the images of Harlem on my mind. In Lexington Avenue (2000), a drew portrait of Billy Holiday, a diva of jazz and an icon for the American Negro, is seen in a trembled image with an ambiguous expression between to sing and to cry out loud. On the same time, its transparency gives her a mystical aspect and let us partially see a seemingly old façade of a building and the emptiness of a street, transmitting a feeling of silent pain, misplacement and anxiety of Harlem´s soul. The combination of a pre-existent depiction of Mrs. Holliday and a real background underlines photography´s representational function and the uncertainty of its present time.
The ambiguity and delicate lack - or search - for balance and non-definition of time is also suggested in E.128th St. (2000). Immobility and movement are confronted as the lines on the floor symbolic traces a possible way and sustains a little girl of whom we cannot see the legs and who is led by someone else. Besides, the use of a neutral background intensifies the identity issues, leaving the viewer unaware of the photograph´s location and date, what is only revealed by its title and formal information - which, on the other hand, don´t provide any other directive tips, leaving the images open for the viewer´s own interpretation.
Time is a fundamental element in Benhelima´s oeuvre being masterly exploited in Harlem´s series. The artist creates timeless images that seem old in a first glance but, many times, present subtle contemporary details bringing the viewer back and forth to past and present, what once again gives a sensation of destabilization, enhances the feeling of transition, obscures distinctiveness turning it universal, and criticizes the notion of truth. In Fredrick Douglas BL., a picture of an old man with a hat seated in front of rough walls reminds of the 1930´s imagery while the graffiti and his untied sneakers indicate that it is a near past.
The discontinuation of the Black&White Polaroid 600 film turned Benhelima´s photographs - then, still a work-in-progress - into a collector´s item, but forced him to give a new twist in its development. Envisaging monochrome images, the artist chose the red color as a counter-part for its liveliness and paradoxical allusions, which he also sees in Harlem´s people: fever, passion, violence, blood, the daily conflict with ourselves. In an extensive layer, the red gets fused within the figurative elements creating a swinging rhythm in the major B&W oeuvre as a jazzy composition. Wassily Kandinsky once said that that vivid color gives the impression of strong drumbeats; in W. 145th St., the red portrait of a laughing lady in a turban with a bright light on her forehead leads us to those heard in African religious rituals, also practiced in Harlem. The light refers to what could be the third eye emphasizing, in a different direction than in Mrs. Holliday´s portrait, the mystical element present in that community.
W. 145th St. is emblematic not only for its characteristics and qualities but also for being the very first step to Benhelima´s following project, Semitics, which echoes the discovery in New York of his Arabic-Jewish background through, once more, a totally refreshed form of photographic investigation, also using the same medium as basis.
Charif Benhelima is a Belgian artist who considers his creative and intellectual process a crucial element for the development of his vision. Averse to stagnations, he is always seeking for challenges that are capable to deconstruct his way of seeing, instigating him toward new approaches, which are simultaneously built up by the reconstruction of his strong-based thoughts.
*Daniella Geo (33) is a Brazilian independent curator and journalist, resident in Belgium, who on the moment is an associated curator of the Biennale International de Photographie et Arts Visuels de Liège (2006), collaborates with the cultural space Darcy Ribeiro, of the Brazilian Embassy in Brussels, and is developing a DEA (Diplôme d´Études Approfondies) research on the recontextualization of photographic documents in contemporary art, under the direction of Philippe Dubois, at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris III.
Notes:
(1) In film, the term first appeared as definition of a genre in 1926 in a review on Flaherty's Moana (1926) written by the British theorist and filmmaker John Grierson. In photography, similar usage of the term was first applied in 1928 in France and Germany and around 1930 in the United States.
(2) a 9-year photographic research where personal experiences and a XXth century History of immigration to Europe are interwoven through rash-poetic images of daily ordinary scenes of people of different cultures living (or wishing to) in Belgium, in an elaborate reference to an emotion (the feeling of being a foreigner in his homeland) rather than to facts.
(3) The notion of a subjective approach regarding social issues was called "private realities" in the mid-1900.
