wild goose chase
afterthought
Few people will have heard the name of Charles de Brosses, comte de Tournay, baron de Montfalcon, seigneur de Vezins et de Prevessin. Yet in the year 1760 this French nobleman wrote an academic paper that had a profound effect on the intellectual world, and in doing so he coined a term we still use today. The paper was a study on the origins of religion; it was very likely the first work ever published in the field of ethno-anthropology. It also included the first use of the term fétiche. Fetish.
In anthropological terms, a fetish is an object or series of objects attributed with magical or supernatural power. Later, Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud would appropriate the term and apply it to their own concerns…the illusory magic of capitalism, the sexualization of physical objects. But to de Brosses and every anthropology student in the world, a fetish remains an object imbued with spiritual and mystical power.
Whenever I look at the still life photographs of Fiona Crawford Watson I am nudged by the ghost of Charles de Brosses. The objects she gathers together…those odd stones, that bundle of twigs trussed up with red and white string, the strange rune-covered scrap of paper…always suggest a deep, ritualistic import. By bringing certain objects together and placing them just so, she draws forth some subtle power from them. They become fetishes, suffused with elusive magics, and I am hopelessly, happily spellbound.
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, greg fallis and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
