The Ogre Day 2 - Theme 1: Photography

1. Photography for Abel

Abel uses photography to create some happiness and joy that he has complete control over in his life. Snapping photographs and developing the film yield thematic ideas such as; “Godlike power,” inversion, sexual power, predatory power and the ultimate goal of being “the possessor and the possessed.”

Sexual power – Abel is unable to satisfy sexually because of his ambiguous sexual nature and underdevelopment. His camera is described in a manner that it is in essence his “genitalia,” as photographing these children and enjoying their jovial happiness, he indulges sexually (or as close to sexual indulgence as he will ever be).

“So on this fine sunny first of May, having breakfasted gaily and briefly, I set out on image-hunting, my camera lovingly stowed in its genital position...A waterman worked away furiously at the pump of a barge, and at each effort a yellow ejaculation streamed out at the waterline,”(pps. 104-5).

Predatory power – In taking photographs, Abel is “ensnaring” his prey without them knowing, and he also “kills” the person in the still frame of immobility.

“Telescopic lenses that enable one to operate from a distance, without any contact with the subject, kill what is most moving about taking pictures: the slight suffering that is experiences, together and from opposite poles, by the person who knows he is being photographed and by the person who knows he is known to be committing a predatory act, to be hijacking an image,”(P. 112).

Godlike power/Inversion- Abel has utter control over the “fate” of these images – he can manipulate them in any way he pleases, enlarge them, invert them, just as God has manipulated his life and existence.

“But it is from the enlargement of the image, and the possibilities this offers of inversion, that the most singular powers of the photographer derive. For it is not merely a matter of metamorphosis from black to white and vice versa…through photography, wild infinity becomes domesticated,” (p. 109).

Happiness/lost “Eden” – These photographs are the closest that Abel will get to “possessing” love/happiness. Society rejects his love of children and his appearance that set him apart as an outcast, so this is the lost paradise of old-Adam that he wished to return to, where he could be happy.

“I shall always love these images, bright and deep as lakes, into which I dive with abandon on certain lonely evenings. In them is life, smiling, pump, on offer, imprisoned in the magic paper, a last survival of slavery, that lost paradise I have not ceased to mourn,”(p.104)

“Photography promotes a reality into the plane of dream; it metamorphoses a real object into its own myth. This lens is the narrow gate through which the elect, those called to become gods and heroes possessed, make their secret entry into my inner Pantheon,”(p. 104).

Malign Inversion/possessor-possessed- Old-Adam was both “possessor and possessed,” in his hermaphroditic state. With photographs, Abel is “full/satiated” (hunger) with these photographs of children and the power he has over them. But when he has his mug shot taken, it is ironic because it’s perversion of how he wants to be possessed (malign inversion).

“Then I was photographed in full face and in profile – I, the stealer of images! Absurd and malign inversion!” (p. 124).