In this lecture we looked at what makes up a photograph, the limitations and characteristics.
We listed the things we think about/of a photograph
– It is 2D
– It flattens the world
– It has edges
– It is an artefact
– It is still
– It is fixed in time
– It is (colour or) monochrome
– It has denotations and connotations
– It is a truth
– It serves a purpose/is considered a work of art
– It involves a relationship between it’s participants
– We often do not fully understand the context of the image without more information.
I often forget about an image as an object and its physical form, usually a piece of paper, but rather get too distracted about what’s in the photograph. So it was interesting to think about the edges of a photograph, its texture and its form as just a photograph.
“A photograph can be viewed on several levels, To begin with, it is a physical object, a print.
On this print is an image, an illusion of a window on to the world. It is on this level that we usually read a picture and discover it’s content: a souvenir of an exotic land, the face of a lover, a wet rock, a landscape at night. Embedded in this level is another that contains signals to our mind’s perceptual apparatus.
It gives ‘spin’ to what the image depicts and how it is organized”
– Shore, S (The Nature of Photographs) 2007
This quote made me contemplate the physical attributes of a photograph and how they can affect what we take from the visual objects in the image on the print. We read differently into images that have been presented in different ways, so why would I disregard the qualities of the actual photography, as an object in it’s own right.
I was quite relieved to see “We often do not fully understand the context of the image without more information” because this is something that happens to me a lot. I read into images in my own way that might not have been the photographers intensions, whether this is good or not I’m not sure.
I think that once a set of photographs have been put into context it strengthens the images for me, I see their purpose and the intensions behind the work and completes the work.
Deconstructing a Photograph
It Flattens the world
We said that a photograph squishes our 3D world into a 2D one. Which is something we often forget about in an image, because we are so used to seeing flat images of our world, we think nothing of it. Is this a limitation? it’s defiantly something to consider in our work.
We can of course apply depth to our images by using techniques like depth of field, Leading lines, Objects to give the image scale.
Many photographers create a path for the viewer’s eye to tour the image in a certain set out manner.
It has Edges – It’s a window
“Photography is inherently an analytic discipline.
Where a painter starts with a blank canvas and builds a picture, a photographer starts with the messiness of the world and selects a picture.
A photographer standing before houses and streets and people and trees and artifacts of a culture imposes an order on the scene – simplifies the jumble by giving it structure.
He or she imposes this order by choosing a vantage point, choosing a frame, choosing a moment of exposure, and by selecting a plane of focus”
– Shore, S (The Nature of Photographs) 2007
This quote starts to touch upon the elements we have to consider when composing our photograph, the framing, the timing etc.
As a photographer we have to select what we want to photograph out of everything.
A painter will create what he or she wants to depict, photographers have to work what is in front of them and make decisions like framing, exposure, timing, focus to make it our own and let our work say what we want it too.
We start to think that a photograph frames a small part of our world, do we just think about the things within this frame, do we start to imagine what’s outside of the frame, does what we see continue after the image has been taken?
We could do small things within our images that hint at these points above.
In this image by August Sander all the subjects are very central, sitting comfortably with the frame, not squished in, head room, room either side of the group. Its not a cramped photograph, we don’t seem to be interested with whats going on outside of that frame and all of out attention is taken to the subjects within the image.
But with this image by Christopher Dunn, we are curious as to what is going on outside the borders of our vision that has been restricted by the edges of the frame. This is because the subject is looking outwards and we are left wondering at what he is interested in looking at.
Fixed in Time
Of course a photograph is referred to as a moment fixed in time, something from the past that have been preserved on paper. That particular is ageing as soon as it has been taken, but what about the physical photograph ageing itself, left out in the sun and the colours will bleach and fade leaving traces of it’s life and events. Photographs will stick together if they get wet, some may yellow/brown with age showing their age length and events of it’s existence.
I really love this idea and this is something i’m using in my final idea.
Another thing we looked at are photographers that use stillness to provoke us to think about what happens after the image has been taken. Like a film still.
Gregory Crewdson creates images that do just this. There is a certain anticipation in his images that leave me waiting for the image to move and carry on with the story.
This type of image makes the viewer question what is going on? why are they doing that? and perhaps when there isn’t much going on we stop and think well this image isn’t telling us much, why has it been photographed? and this leaves our imagination to carry the sequence on.
Denotation/Connotation
A denotation is the literal meaning of the image.
A connotation is an association, emotional or otherwise, which the image evokes.
“The studium is that very wide field of unconcerned desire, of various interest, of inconsequential taste: I like/I don’t like.
The studium is of the order of liking, not of loving; it mobilises a half desire, a demi-violation; it is the same sort of vague, slippery, irresponsible interest one takes in the people, the entertainments, the books, the clothes one finds ‘all right”
– Barthes, R (Camera Lucida) 1980
A Studium is what we might like, consider as alright, in a image. The Punctum is what makes us love an image, makes it our favourite. Someone’s punctum will be another’s studium.
It serves a purpose or is considered a work of art
We started to think about the purpose of images and how we look at these images can be altered by altering their setting.
Like putting the family photo collection into a museum, we are primed to see art in a museum so we will probably consider the work as art instead of a memory, which was it’s original purpose when it was in a shoe box in the spare room.
There is a relationship between it’s participants
We named the 3 participants of a photograph as
-The Viewer
-The Subject
-The Photographer
We have to consider the relationships between these participants when considering a photograph. This is what will evoke ideas/emotions in all of these people and this is what we use to bring our ideas and meanings forward in the image.
An Image relies heavily on context
Images usually have some sort of context to place it better in the world of photography and it’s meaning as without context it would get lost in the viewers own perceptions of the work.
-Pairings
-Sequencing
-Scale
-Presentation methods – exhibition/book/box etc
-Titles
-Artist statements
-Previous work
-Medium
The above are things that will place our images in context to support the ideas that are trying to be portrayed.
Simple things like reading the title of the work will hint at the purpose of the work and will usually change our previous perception of it.
For instance the image below would be viewed as an abandoned house that has been left to rot. Nothing much else for us to read into it.
Then we read the title
“From the 1920s through the 1950s, the city of Niagara Falls, the United States Army, and the Hooker Chemical Corporation dumped over 200 different toxic chemicals into Love Canal”
…it gives us a completely new angle to view the work from. We have a lot more information about the purpose of the work, and I certainly look at it differently from what I did previously.
For me, the title gave the image more strength, it obviously has a lot more meaning and purpose behind it than what I previously thought.
This shows the power of a simple title.
Alice Riddy 