Hermeneutics is not mentioned in The Art and Science of Portraiture. Nevertheless, it may be the philosophical framework that is most closely attuned to portraiture’s concerns and methods. Originating in debates over the interpretation of sacred texts, hermeneutics became, in the 20th century, an account of meaning making in general. Its central claim is that all human understanding, even the most theoretical and abstract, ultimately relies on our embeddedness in the life-world. There is always a relational context to how we make sense of ourselves and others, or indeed of anything in our experience. We are never not connected to what we are trying to understand; or, to put it another way, the object of our understanding is always part of a bigger context in which we ourselves are included.
One finds this insight in portraiture’s emphasis on the researcher’s subjectivity. The task of the portraitist is not to set this subjectivity aside, but to embrace what it can tell us, when placed “in close communion with rigorous and systematic attention to the details of social reality and human experience” (1997, p. 8). The personhood and the voice of the researcher become self-evidently part of the research process, and skills in deliberate, contextual self-reflection become important for researchers to acquire. The portraitist, Lawrence-Lightfoot says, asks both “What is the meaning of this action, gesture, or communication to the actors in this setting?” and “What is the meaning of this to me?” (1997, p. 91).
The central themes of portraiture, including context, voice, relationship, and the emergence of meaning from “a dynamic process of receptivity, negotiation and accommodation” (1997, p. 186), all speak to a hermeneutic understanding of how truths are held in the world. This applies to the emphasis on aesthetics and art-making as well. The ability of a work of art to strike us, according to the hermeneutic philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer, is a measure of its truthfulness—its ability to disclose something about the world of which we are part. Thus the labour of the portraitist to “construct a portrait—an aesthetic whole—that resounds with authenticity” (1997, p. 247) is a search for hermeneutic truth of this kind.
From eco-hermeneutics to eco-justice
“Voice in portraiture,” as Lawrence-Lightfoot tells us, “encompasses… epistemology, ideology, and method” (1997, p. 87). When the concept of voice expands from human to more-than-human, our ways of listening need to expand as well. But this is something artists already know: what you are trying to portray can tell you how to portray it, if you pay attention in the right way. That is, eco-hermeneutic practice can be seen as a practice of letting the world teach you, bringing you into closer attunement with its ways of being. In this way, ecoportraiture, understood hermeneutically, is in fact a kind of eco-education; as a research methodology, it is aligned with the processes of teaching and learning that it seeks to study. The ecoportraitist should be changed by her research, becoming differently positioned, differently relational, as a result of the work.
One dimension of this shift consists in deeper engagement and self-questioning around issues of Indigeneity and (de)colonization. Ecoportraiture in many parts of the world (including here in BC where CIRCE is located) is inevitably situated on colonized land. That colonial history may make itself known through absence—for example, the absence of Indigenous languages, traditions, and teachings based in the land—and also through many forms of presence, including colonial narratives of settlement and relationships to land and Indigenous peoples. Even when ecoportraiture does not directly involve Indigenous participants or an Indigenous portraitist, it calls portraitists to deepen their awareness of this history, its enduring consequences for both human and more-than-human subjects, and the intersections of their work with local, regional and global struggles for justice and Indigenous resurgence.
In its summary report (2015), Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission recognized the importance of listening to land to this quest for justice. Although it failed to make it into the TRC’s Calls to Action, we see this paragraph as providing an important context for ecoportraiture work:
Reconciliation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians, from an Aboriginal perspective, also requires reconciliation with the natural world. If human beings resolve problems between themselves but continue to destroy the natural world, then reconciliation remains incomplete. This is a perspective that we as Commissioners have repeatedly heard: that reconciliation will never occur unless we are also reconciled with the Earth. Mi’kmaq and other Indigenous laws stress that humans must journey through life in conversation and negotiation with all creation. Reciprocity and mutual respect help sustain our survival. It is this kind of healing and survival that is needed in moving forward from the residential school experience (Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 2015, p. 123).
In short, ecoportraiture provides a way of exploring how truth is held not by human beings alone, but in deep reciprocal relationships with place and nature, and the forms that “the search for goodness” may take when people start to listen more closely to the land.