“Atrium, Farwell Building,” by Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre. From The Ruins of Detroit.
For the last several weeks, I’ve been working on a post about “ruin porn.”
(For those who aren’t familiar with the term, “ruin porn” refers to photographic documentation of abandoned and/or run-down buildings and facilities. The most characteristic and well-known examples are made in Detroit, like those of Marchand and Meffre.)
It has proven to be one of those vexing subjects that constantly splits and changes, making it quite difficult to pursue in an ordered fashion or with any kind of consistency. Which is why it went from a quick post I intended to knock out in a matter of days to something that I’ve been pondering, rewriting, and occasionally even reading up for (gasp!) over a period of weeks.
The results cannot be easily condensed into a single short post, and in fact would not really fit together well even as a single megalong post; many aspects just wouldn’t be reconcilable.
So, I’m going to split it up into three posts. This first post will deal with what folks mean by “porn” when they say, “ruin porn.” The second will deal with the actual or possible modes of enjoyment associated with ruin porn; i.e., what is it about this material we are calling porn that people may be getting off on? The third will more directly address the question of the value of this kind of photography.
What puts the “porn” in “ruin porn”?
Ruin porn is well outside my normal areas of concern. My interest in it was piqued by three posts which appeared in my feed reader around the same time: one at The Online Photographer, one at Conscientious, and one at David Campbell’s blog (which I encountered via Conscientious). What interested me in particular about these posts is the question of determining the meaning and use of the phrase itself, and the different way each approached that question.
I strongly suggest reading the posts. But I will summarize (and hopefully not totally mangle) the aspects that I found particularly interesting::
Johnston (The Online Photographer) is interested in the dichotomy of porn and reality — the difference between the real thing and the idealized representation. He reads the “porn” in “ruin porn” as a criticism of the unreal nature of the depiction in question. This matches up to a focus on the intentions that are revealed by the way in which photographers “quote out of context,” to use Szarkowski’s term for photographic composition. Many attacks on “ruin porn” emphasize the tendency to exclude sites that are in active use or development adjacent to sites that are run-down or abandoned, which heightens the sense of ruin at the expense of a more “real,” contextualized depiction.
This is likely a valid avenue of attack in many cases, and perhaps in all. However, when applying such attacks, it is important to remember that one cannot criticize a photograph merely for decontextualizing a subject, unless one is making a case against photography as a whole. To photograph is to exclude context. So, when one attacks a particular photograph for the way it decontextualizes, one must be able to say how it ought to have decontextualized the same subject. And I think it is not sufficient to merely state that the good and the bad in Detroit and other cities ought to be displayed side by side.
This is an interesting question, and I think for a photographer who is actually approaching the subject, it must be one of the most paramount questions. However, I think that Johnston is misapplying it when he connects it up to the question of whether the resulting photographs should be called “porn” — contextual failing is a characteristic not so much of pornography as of bad journalism. And Johnston’s suggested remedy — which is to more clearly differentiate between “art” and “documentary” photography with different standards of veracity — seems rather bizarre to me, for a number of reasons. (To start with, art v. documentary, especially in photography, is very different from porn v. reality, and it’s not as though a standard complaint regarding porn is, “Man, that’s too artistic.”)
Campbell’s argument is essentially this: calling something pornography does not help us better empathize with the subjects depicted in it. I think that his argument is persuasive, well-reasoned, and certainly well-researched, but I also think it only addresses a strict practical concern for social outcomes. That is to say, Campbell’s perspective seems grounded in the premises of advocacy photojournalism — getting the viewer to act a certain way based on the images they’re presented with.
I don’t think this observation takes anything away from Campbell’s reasoning, but this is not the only basis for judging the quality of a photograph. Campbell does allude to the historical connections of the idea of pornography with the cause of moralistic manipulation but I think that it would be hasty to assume that everyone who is criticizing “ruin porn” and other related forms of photography is doing so because they share the same kind of moral intentions. I would presume that at least some of those who would like to criticize such work are more concerned with the nature and quality of the photographs as art or as document than with their utility as tools for helping people.
Colberg’s (Conscientious) response to Campbell is centered firmly on the side of the viewers. In the humanitarian aspect, Colberg asserts that any outrage is better than no outrage, and that the dissatisfaction expressed by those who describe work as “ruin porn” may be cynical but also includes an idealistic component. (Although even if this is correct, I’m not sure how relevant that is to Campbell’s pragmatic arguments.)
But Colberg also states that, “at [pornography’s] core lies a corruption of the act of mindful viewing.” I think this cuts closer to the heart of the matter for me — not necessarily of pornography as such, mind you, but of the nature of the insult we intend when we append “porn” to a genre name. In this sense, to say that a photograph is “ruin porn” is to say that we are (and are meant to be) enjoying it for the wrong reasons, or that we are (and are meant to be) enjoying it in the wrong way, or both.
But what is the specific deformity of enjoyment that is suggested here? Colberg defines porn-viewing as “mindless and superficial, yet titillating,” and also as “an invitation to shamelessly ogle.” This clarifies something of the character and depth of the viewer’s enjoyment of “ruin porn,” but does not really describe or define it. What about these photographs titillates? What urge is being satisfied by them, or is supposed to be satisfied by them?
These are interesting questions, but addressing them is beyond the scope of this post — partly because they are quite the can of worms, but also because I think they do not necessarily bear on the common usage of the word — that is to say, I think those who use the word in the way Colberg suggests would probably not respond any more specifically or in greater depth if pressed on the point. This is not to say one cannot go deeper with the metaphor, just that to do so takes us beyond the realm of overtly intended meanings for most users of this terminology. So, that’s a matter for post #2.
For the conclusion of this post, I would like to suggest an additional (provisional and probably unsatisfactory) answer of my own to the question of what we mean by the “porn” in “ruin porn.”
I don’t think that Johnston, Campbell, or Colberg are wrong in their responses (although I do have caveats for each, as mentioned). I think that each addresses one of many overlapping meanings of “porn.” As with our discussion on portraiture recently, it is important to bear in mind the phenomenon of family resemblance regarding definitions. (And if one were to expand the inquiry to cover other “porn”-ographic photo genres, like “food porn,” “gear porn,” “house porn,” etc., then that family might have to be substantially enlarged.)
But I think there is one strictly functional use of the word — a use which is not a definition — that runs through all of these “porn” genre identifications: Porn is boring.
No, that’s not quite right. An avid viewer enjoying porn obviously finds it fully (if perhaps temporarily) engrossing. But porn is boring to talk about. So, if I call something “ruin porn,” I may not primarily intend to describe a specific pornographic aspect of the photograph itself. I may simply be saying, “this is a boring photograph of a rundown building, and I have no further interest in discussing it,” — just as I have no interest in discussing the plot, dialogue, or cinematography of a pornographic film, even though I might be interesting in discussing the same qualities of a different sort of film.
To use the term this way is not to express a truth about the photograph as such — it is just to display my feelings about it. A “do not disturb” sign communicates a clear message but does not convey information or meaning; I think much of the time, talking about “ruin porn,” works the same way — as a sign, rather than a message.
In this sense, “porn” as a genre identifier is rather like “snapshot” — a term which has multiple, often contradictory, meanings, but which is usually invoked for its value as a shorthand for dismissal rather than for any actual ability to meaningfully describe a work to which it refers.
