Civilization

There is a strange tension at play in Zak van Biljon’s recent body of photographic work. As if transported to another planet, we are witness to bizarre environments in which cities and homesteads – those places of safety in which we dwell and thrive – are suddenly host to an invasion of red trees, pink grass and candyfloss coloured foliage. This is a trick of light, so to speak, as Van Biljon has utilised infrared photographic technology to investigate our complex relationship with the natural and built environment.

As the title suggests, this project is centred on the concept of civilisation. We have come to understand civilisations as complex urban structures in which human populations are delineated and stratified along socio-political and economic lines. While civilisation is most often understood as the harbinger of stability and security, it is also seen as the epicentre of order and power. It offers a means to centralise, domesticate and culturalise humans by means of creating vast cities and networks in which we live and through which we move. As a result, the built environment came to be the epicentre of a larger drive towards refinement and progress, with the outline of the cityscape etched out against the horizon becoming a prime visualising tool for imagining the life of the modern human.

However, civilisation has always been marked by conflict and haunted by its own potential self-destruction. Just think of Sigmund Freud’s famous publication of Civilisation and Its Discontents, in which he highlights the uneasiness that civilisation inevitably produces. As Freud maintains, tension between civilisation and individuality is a basic outcome of modern society, as the individual's quest for freedom and civilisation's contrary demand for conformity breeds repression and discontent. Centuries earlier, French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau already bemoaned the fact that “civilisation is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces”. It seems as if the very project of civilisation has, since its inception, been susceptible to criticism by those who are aware of its potential to be an unequal, if not brutal, disciplining structure. Increasingly, modern civilisation has been slated for its drive towards environmental and cultural domination in ways that are unsustainable and self-destructive. In short, humans have lost much faith in the modernist idea of a ‘perfect’ civilisation; that is, of an institution that can save us from not only our enemies, but also our worst attributes and inclinations.

Such ideas form the conceptual backdrop to Van Biljon’s photographic investigation of areas of human settlement. The use of infrared photography is central to Van Biljon’s personal practice and it is a medium in which the artist is well versed. In Civilisation, his use of such technology is very strategic, as it allows him to explore the subject matter in a novel manner.

Infrared photography offers a gaze upon the world in which invisible features are made perceptible to the human eye. While we can see wavelengths from about 400 to 700 nanometres, infrared falls above our observable light spectrum. The invention of infrared photography in the early 1900s led to a radically new view on the world that surrounds the human being, with infrared photography being used in a range of disciplines. For example, during the First World War infrared was by used in aerial photography to better document cities and monitor enemy activity. Subsequently, it has proven to be very useful for not only warfare and military observation, but even in medicine where it is used to detect disease. In the field of astronomy, infrared cameras are still used to discover celestial objects, while art conservationists use infrared photography to see beneath a painting’s surface. Even botanists and ecologists use the medium to detect infestation, disease and changes in plant and animal life. Our understanding of ourselves and the world around us have become enmeshed with certain ocular tools and visual paradigms, of which infrared photography is a prime example. We use it to penetrate the skin, control our environment and expose the universe around us. Infrared photography presents us with a scopic regime (to borrow Martin Jay’s usage of the term), that determines how we look, where we look and, hence, how we understand and negotiate our sense of reality.

By using infrared photography, Van Biljon transforms the familiar into the fantastical and unexpected. Most noticeably, this photographic process transforms lush green vegetation into hues of pink, maroon and red. The cityscapes and built environments that he documents in this body of work become strange and unfamiliar settings in which the natural world is transformed into some alien territory. It is interesting to note how infrared photography leaves buildings and houses in fairly the same shade as we would expect them to be, but vegetation is suddenly rendered a foreign, unfamiliar entity because of the dramatic colours it takes on. Plants and trees – our chlorophyllic compatriots – loose that welcoming green glow that we have come to know and treasure. And in this way, Van Biljon presents us with a viewpoint on our living environment that is both spectacular and eerie. It feels as if we cannot be exactly sure whether these photographs present us with alternative utopian environments, or whether these are the ruins of a future civilisation.

Dr Ernst van der Wal, PhD (Visual Arts)

Senior Lecturer: Visual Arts

Stellenbosch University