Michael Fried, Chapter Two: Jeff Wall and Absorption; Heidegger on Worldhood and Technology

All of the second chapter of Michael Fried's book Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before deals with photographs by Jeff Wall in relation to Fried's theory of absorption and realism, and then through the philosophical thoughts of Martin Heidegger.

Chardin, House of Cards

The first Wall photograph we encounter is Adrian Walker, in which a man is shown completely absorbed in his work.  Fried sees this as a classic absorption method which can also be described as a moment where the subject (Walker) is so far removed from everything around him (besides his work) that he has "forgotten" himself, and thus does not acknowledge the viewer.  This method had been previously used by painters like Chardin, whose subjects would be immersed in their activity as such, again ignoring any viewer presence.  Here is where Fried lays claim to one of his arguments.  Although it would seem that Wall is just reusing this old method, he is not, which is good because that method ceased to be useful once Manet painted Olympia, whose facingness, not flatness as Fried states, causes the illusion of the non-existant viewer to no longer exist.  In other words, after Olympia the dilemma became how to acknowledge that a work is made to be viewed by a viewer who must be acknowledged without making it theatrical (the viewer is directly addressed by the subject) but rather absorptive (the viewer is not directly addressed).  Here I found myself questioning whether or not Fried found issue with the facingness of Olympia, for she does confront the viewer head on, so to speak, but at the same time is painted flat, thus drawing attention to the paint as an object and not an illusion of reality.  

Fried argues that Wall's photograph, specifically Adrian Walker, address this issue.  Here we have a subject who is clearly absorbed, and thus as stated before, ignores the viewer.  However, in the way the photograph has been constructed, stated by Wall as being "near documentary" or rather an image in which is not candid, shows that the viewer has been taken into account through what Fried calls "to-be-seeness".  Overall, what Fried wants us to understand is that new art photography such as this raises questions about beholding without being theatrical while still understanding the need for the to-be-seeness of it.

Jeff Wall, After 'Inivisible Man'

The second photograph we come to in this chapter is After 'Invisible Man'.  Again Fried discusses absorption and the idea that the subject's "world" is created so that he can be in it rather than acting out being in it.
Fried also briefly mentions here that there is a link between absorption and realism in that absorption and the applied amount of time it takes to be in that state allows for details in pictorial representation to exist and thus for them to be viewed by viewers.  With all of this taken into account, there is enough time on both the side of the artist and the viewer to actively work in their respective modes.   Although this exact thought process does not show up again, themes of it are interwoven through out the rest of the argument.  And here again I find myself questioning the term absorption.  Does Fried use this as a term only describing the action of subject in works, or does he also use it to describe the ability of a work to absorb the viewer?  I think I mostly get confused in terms of Modern Art and paintings like those of Kenneth Noland's where it is about the viewer experiencing the painting, but I digress.
What becomes interesting from here is how Fried begins to apply After 'Invisible Man' to Martin Heidegger's essay Being and Time, and while I am not going to pretend that I fully understand the ideas presented here, I am going to do my best in deconstructing them to a level of simple understanding and then try to apply them to the photographs.  Basically, from what I can gather, Dasein (Heidegger's term for human beings) do not first encounter objects as they are (Heidegger's term for which is "present-at-hand") but rather as what they are able to do or to be used for in the care of the world ("readiness-to-hand").
Sometimes there is a breakdown in the ability of an object to work in readiness-at-hand, and so it becomes an object that is experienced just by looking at it and it functions as something that is present-at-hand.  With the present-at-hand the worldness of the object is removed, causing it to become a space where observing and looking are the only things that occur, and thus no subjective thought or feeling can be brought out.
In looking at Wall's invisible man photograph, Fried says that the man's environment does not exist only as present-at-hand (which might be a characteristic of photography that Fried address later) but as a collection of things "in order to" fit human purposes (equipment used for a purpose).
Next Fried addresses the fact that the camera only produces things that are present-at-hand because no photograph could ever result in showing Daseins' practical absorption in the world, as opposed to painting where the absorption is shown through the ability of the artist to create a labored finished product.  But here again Fried plays off of this and suggests that Walls photographs have the potential to be thought in a Heideggian light because of Wall's ability to create a world in his photographs that function much in the same way a painting does.
Another critique of Wall's photograph under Heidegger philosophy is Untangling.  Here the man in the image looks defeatedly down at an entanglement of ropes.  For the viewer we are seeing a breakdown in the equipment, ropes that are no longer useful, and so they become present-at-hand for the subject of the photograph.  This theme continues on into many of Wall's photographs where the appearance and condition of objects are in conflict with their function (dirty cleaning implements, etc.).  For example, Rain Filled Suitcase, Diagonal Composition No.2 and Diagonal Composition No. 3 all show objects that have become present-at-hand.  In opposition to this Wall's Sapling Held by a Post and Clipped Branches, East Cordova St., Vancouver show how equipment has been used in the care of the world, or in other words, the final product of equipment use.

Jeff Wall, Clipped Branches, East Cordova St., Vancouver

The only photograph Fried mentions that goes beyond these basic understandings of Heidegger's thoughts is Jeff Wall's image Staining Bench.  Fried wraps up this end of his argument with this photograph because he sees it as representing an object that is clearly ready-at-hand, just not for the viewer, which in turn means that it both uses and escapes Heidegger.  Fried goes onto theorize that perhaps for Heidegger this is as close as photography can come to being ready-at-hand and so he states that is may be a photographic equivalent in which the use of objects by the photographer can be seen as being ready-at-hand.
At the very end of the chapter Fried discusses Heidegger's thoughts on technology in relation to Wall's A View from an Apartment.  Fried's interest in this photograph goes beyond what we might at this point his obvious understanding of it (realistic representation of an apartment that shows its to-be-seeness along with the self-referencing of the artist) into a theme of globalized technology that might raise questions asked by Heidegger as well as answer them.

In The Question Concerning Technology by Heidegger, we see that for him technology demands that nature put forth energy to be stored.  This for him is a problem because it "enframes" Dasein in a world that has become a picture and thus man becomes the subject for which the picture has been made.  Fried states that his understanding of this photograph is that it represents the way globalized technology frames our mode of being in the current world.

Gregory Crewdson, Plate 19 from the series Twilight

While all of these arguments are well thought out and presented it seems to me a bit odd to place all of these Heideggerian terms in light of only Jeff Wall.  At this point I feel as though I know enough about Jeff Wall, and how much Fried likes his work, to become interested in other photographers who are doing similar pictorial things.  Gregory Crewdson comes to mind, but I get the feeling that Fried would not be interested in his work and would claim it to be theatrical in the sense that it has so distinctly been constructed.
In the end, I'm not sure how important it is that some of Wall's work lines up with Heidegger's ideas and themes.  I feel like I am still missing out on the important overarching theme of this section, probably due to my limited understanding of Heidegger, but still, it seems that in the overall presentation of things, Heidegger's connection to photography is very interesting and very limited.