ABSTRACT
Any acknowledgment of the role of the negative in the making of photographs opens up the history of that medium to many new avenues of investigation. The photographic art of the German couple Bernd and Hilla Becher is usually taken as the epitome of this typological urge. In the case of Rosler, her refusal to take a moral position on the subject of drunkenness forces viewers to look at-and not just through-her other subject: documentary photography itself. The standardised, cropped, narrow image space, concentrating on the face; the subjection of the sitter to an unreturnable gaze; the clarity of features and sharpness of focus; the addition of names, numbers, and identifying information: these are the visible traces of disciplinary power. Photography is like a mosaic that becomes a synthesis only when it is presented en masse, declared Sander. "It turns out there is nothing more dangerous, more frightening, than 'things as they are".
