Alfred Eisenstadt’s “Children at Puppet Theatre”

Since the strike at York University began back in early November (it seems so long ago now), I’ve had a lot of time to devote to doing my own reading and art-seeing, independently of classes or my thesis. In some ways, it’s been sort of liberating to devote so much time and energy to just seeing and doing “stuff I like:” something that I think art critics and historians occasionally forget is an acceptable thing to do (I know I do).

A prof I studied with in the first year of my master’s made the interesting assertion that art historians need to be more open and honest about the kind of work we are drawn to or interested in, rather than trying to obscure the interest or passion through objective, passive writing. She was trying to make the point that being invested in an artist and their work means there is something affective about it – something worth investigating further, even if the affect is uncomfortable, disturbing or frustrating – and that by acknowledging this interest and affect, we (as writers, critics, historians and just plain regular viewers) implicate ourselves in the process of meaning-making that we hope most great artworks would instigate.

So, in the vein of acknowledging artworks I’m drawn to, I wanted to post this amazing photo by Alfred Eisenstadt, the photojournalist who’s created a series of famous news images and who’s recently been the subject of several retrospectives, including one in 2007 at the pre-renovation AGO. I stumbled across the puppet theatre image in a catalogue from New York’s International Center of Photography at Pulp Fiction Books when I lived in Vancouver and was immediately taken with it. It’s stayed with me since then, and VoCA’s recent post about puppet-themed exhibitions made me think of it again.

I love the wide range of emotions on the kids’ faces, the genuine shock, awe and enthusiasm they show and most of all the fact that the focus of their attention is directed on the action going on behind us, the viewer, on the absorbing puppet show which we will never get to witness or experience in that same way. For me, it is a great example of when photojournalistic photography does what it does best by making us think about how the camera looks at us, and not just how we use the camera to look at the world.