Artwork: Cornelia Parker, Avoided Object Photographs of the sky above the Imperial War Museum, London, 1999
How do we confer meaning onto an artwork? Often it’s a confluence of unique factors and dependent on the individual viewing/experiencing the work. Take this photograph for instance, one of a series of four, created by British artist Cornelia Parker of clouds above the Imperial War Museum in London in 1999. Aesthetically it appears ominous, potentially rain clouds, overcast, heavy and dark. There’s even a hint of foreboding, that sense of a shift in atmosphere where a change in weather seems inevitable. Yet it’s the story behind the creation of the image that truly casts a more disturbing interpretation or impression.
Housed in the museum Parker discovered a camera belonging to Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Höss. Parker was given permission to put film in the camera and take it outside the museum. Parker said this about the experience:
“I asked the Imperial War Museum if I could use the camera that belonged to Rudolf Höss, the Commandant of Auschwitz. He used it to photograph his family. Who knows if it recorded the horrors of the prison camp too? I was allowed to take the camera outside the museum and photograph the sky. Capturing the clouds seemed appropriate. It was a way of averting my mind from the fact I was looking through the same aperture as a mass murderer. The camera was loaded with infrared film, making the resulting image appear more sinister than benign.”
A simple image, a seemingly innocuous subject, and yet the story and correlation of events in the photograph’s making gives these clouds a slanted, uneasy, even menacing meaning by association with a horrific past, person and place.
The story behind it becomes the bridge between the recent and historical past, with the subject and potential interpretations, and with the artist and the audience. Imagination also plays a critical role in making the leaps and connections that shapes interpretation.
Otherwise, they’re simply clouds.