Paomaster

Early portrait photography did not approve of any kind of physical display on the part of the sitters. At best, discreet hand gestures were permitted. In this respect, the daguerreotype from around 1840 displayed in Thorvaldsen Museum Copenhagen has become a famous exception. It shows sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen who during the exposure made a gesture with his left hand, supposedly to ward off the evil eye.

As a rule, the first people to have their photographs taken sat motionless, patiently following the photographer’s instruction and then waited excitedly for the resulting image. Soon, photographer’s studios took on the character of salons, a certain refinement became the norm, dictating the behavior of the visitors. There was no waving, no rabbit ears, no messing about in front of the camera,. Photographs were expensive and any physical activity would have caused blurring, undesirable both to the photographer, who wanted to supply high quality works and collect his fee, and to those portrayed, who wished to take home likenesses that were as true to life as possible, or better than real life.

The amateur photographs taken later by snapshooters, due to the mobility of the apparatuses, the growing technical precision of the exposure time and fine-tuning of the chemicals, which made it possible to record an image within seconds, paved the way for the varied use of photography and allowed a certain freedom of behavior in front of the camera. Waving can be considered one such freedom.

Waving is the visual expression of the joy of meeting again, a greeting, or when combined with the wafting of a handkerchief, the sorrow of parting. Waving can be highly expressive, making extensive use of the body rather than just the arm. At the same time, it can be hidden or tentative, subtle and delicate, and is a complex, reserved gesture when compared to hugging or direct physical contact.

The German born artist Sigune Hamann has been collecting and making still and moving images of waving figures over the last four years. She started with a collection of 1950s photographs of Berliners waving to relatives across the newly-erected Berlin wall, a practice soon declared illegal by the East German authorities. Since any kind of greeting was against the law and one was always in danger of being deported within East Germany, the inhabitants had the ingenious idea of cleaning their windows extensively, using large expansive movements. This was understood by those on the other side and united the people of the two towns. Waving reveals an intriguing and multifaceted code of visual communication that deserves to be further examined.

– excerpt from Hello and Goodbye! Photography and the wave by Bodo von Dewitz

Sigune Hamann: Wave
28/02/12–23/03/12
Wellcome Collection, London