Commentaries on Photographs

Introduction

Commentaries on Photographs (Komentarze do fotografii, 1962) is a unique book. Written by the Polish experimental poet Witold Wirpsza, it was created as a response to “The Family of Man,” the Museum of Modern Art’s 1955 travelling exhibition of photography. Curated by MoMA’s head of photography, Edward Steichen, the show included over five hundred photos from around the world, presenting a set of universal, humanistic values. Wirpszas’s book set out to expose the show’s ideological grounding. The original catalog for “The Family of Man” included short quotations from thinkers around the globe, to add meaning to sequences of images. In his book, Wirpsza used a selection of the original photographs and juxtaposed them with his commentaries and poems written partly as ekphrases. The book was rounded out by three contrapuntal studies—poems by Wirpsza based on his commentaries on two images.

In a note found in the poet’s archive, Wirpsza reported that his commentaries arose from the conviction that “The Family of Man” “serves not so much to reveal something, but at least to hide something.”1 Wirpsza noted that the technical perfection of the works and the exhibition as a whole had a theological purpose: the erasure of hell. Commentaries on Photographs was imagined as a polemical instrument that could shed light on the manipulative power of curators. Hence, some reviewers noted the anti-humanistic tone of Wirpsza’s poems. Yet it was the optimistic universalism of humanism that felt suspicious to Wirpsza. In many regards his project is similar to Roland Barthes’s Mythologies, insofar as Commentaries exposes “The Family of Man” as a narrative and propaganda tool.

The three poems selected here juxtapose performing music with work. Both activities depend on the concerted discipline of bodies. The portrait of a family playing a composition becomes an image of attainment through notated music, which overpowers the musicians. The second poem dives deep into hell, an image Wirpsza saw hidden within the entire "Family of Man" project. In the contrapuntal study, these activities become bound together: notes and bars become steps into an abyss towards which a boat is inevitably directed.

—Daniel Muzyczuk

***

7. Music

They read the notes attentively. Mother: upright piano; father: flute; first

Son: bass; second son: clarinet; third son: cello. No daughters

in this family. The furnishings a bit old-fashioned;

A saxophone hangs on the wall, next to it a clock with weights. The father

(Flute) is surely tapping out the rhythm with his foot. They read the notes attentively;

(The transcription for piano is visible in outline, the upright

Piano in the foreground, no doubt: nineteenth century); the reading

Of notes (close attention) lends the faces an air of torpor.

These notes (sticks with knobs) will any moment now drill

Into their skulls, and they’ll walk around with their heads thus stuffed;

The notes protruding with their knobs; as one might say of round-quilled

(All around town, even to work) hedgehogs; in the brain, however,

The little sticks’ points evoke a tickling. “And what’s tickling

You, son?” “I’m tickled, Mother, by the A, the G-sharp, the B, the E-

Major chord.” “And what tickles you, Father?” “Son, the B, it’s the

B that tickles me, the tone that takes us to C.” One of the most

Sublime; music is the most perfect; of ways

Of speaking; the shape of beauty; of falsehood.

                                                                                                 They read the notes attentively, finger

Them precisely; if only; with their fingertips; not to err.

The photograph shows a room in an apartment where a family quintet is playing.

13. Work

There, the trident oars splash; real good muscle

On the back; beneath the skin; they splash, glistening. So far,

Glistening; there are lines, there are nets; oh, into the distance; for fish;

They splash; oh how they glisten.

                                                              At a certain spot at sea

There’s a hole, an opening more or less two meters

In diameter, a whirlpool, but not funnel-like, on the contrary: shaped

Like a cylinder (2m in diameter), its watery greenish

Walls whirling (oh how they splash; how they glisten). This hole, then,

Is where it leads; oh, glistening; the rowers’ rowing (that is:

Useful work; oh how they splash). They slide some-

Teen, tens, hundreds of kilometers down (the hole), into the under-

World, more precisely: -water. Hell (no splashing, no

Glistening). Now hundreds of kilometers (square). And in one

Place (oh, hell; oh, glistening) stands a pillar (country

Fair) of enflamed copper, and the fish they were supposed to catch

Will tell them: Climb up; thus they’ll climb

Up (their skin will hiss) the enflamed

Copper to the top (real good muscle on the

Back); (oh how it hisses; oh, the glistening); enflamed (skin pressed to pillar),

Single file; chest toward; on the back; enflamed; real good

Muscle; single file. The everlastingness of hissing; it splashes; glistening;

Single file; it hisses. The pillar then zigzags through the universe,

A pillar in nooses, useful; infinitude; work; there they are

Splashing; the muscles; the chest; hell; it hisses; single-file
 

Alfred Eisenstaedt, Ghana Tribesmen Paddling, 1953. The photograph shows a fishing boat from the Gold Coast of Africa with Black rowers.

Third Contrapuntal Study

They’ll climb the enflamed copper,

Up; notes (sticks with knobs) drilled into skulls;

Rowers (who knows), musicians (who knows), (hell;

Oh how it glistens), The Fish they were supposed to catch: “And

What’s tickling you, Son?” Music tickles, zigzagging through

The universe, as a pillar of flaming copper: a trumpet,

Tuba mirum; a sound, a watery, greenish, whirling slide down.

The possessing of everlastingness occurs in a room with

Old-fashioned furnishings, there: the skin hisses,

Chest hard against the enflamed metal, the skin

Smokes, round-quilled hedgehogs with a tickle in their brains blow

Into the flute’s opening, file across the strings

Of the cello, bang their little fingers on the keys, file

Across the strings of the bass, blow on the clarinet’s

Reed; the rowers have taken the plunge; explorers; real

Good muscle on the back; of the maw of hell.