When I read the assignment brief I decided to tackle what seemed to me to be the more difficult of the two options. Using props would, I thought, tempt me into being too literal and I had already been there when trying to interpret poetry photographically. For example, my first thought when responding to Blake’s Sick Rose was this.
I felt I needed to find more depth and the idea of anchoring an image with text began to take hold. This set up some new hurdles to overcome.
I looked at Duane Michals’ ‘This photograph is my proof’ to see how text and image could work together and analysed it. I wrote this in my journal.
“Is Duane Michals’ photograph actual proof? Perhaps, but the image is posed. The camera is on a tripod, or held by an assistant or triggered remotely or with a timer. If it’s on a timer I can imagine the flurry of activity to get into position before the shutter fires. How many attempts were there before this successful shot? If the shutter was fired remotely, how much care was taken to hide the cable release before assuming the position. If there was an assistant involved then the impression of intimacy takes on a false note.
The text anchors a meaning to the image that would not otherwise be there. Without the text, the way the couple are facing into the shadow might be significant. The smile on the man’s face and half smile on the woman’s may be a reaction to being photographed as easily as to being in an intimate moment. The classic triangle of the composition and the strong diagonal of the woman’s back emphasised by the dark headboard leads to his smile and makes him rather than her the subject of the image.
There is a game being played here. The author invites the viewer to take part. ‘It did happen. She did love me. Look see for yourself!’”
The next image that struck me (one with an immediate punctum, not Barthes’ wound, more a poke to say , ‘I’m here. Look at me!’) was Fox Talbot’s ‘A Meditation on a Broomstick’. Fox Talbot wrote, “A casual gleam of sunshine, or a shadow thrown across the path, a time-withered oak, or a moss covered stone may awaken a train of thoughts and feelings and picturesque imaginings.” (1) The idea of awakening a train of thought led me into Assignment 2.
After looking at Anne Turyn’s ‘Illustrated Memories (1983-95) a fictional biography’ (2) and seeing how her pictures evoke half-remembered things I realised the need for a more formal input. I read Roland Barthes ‘The Rhetoric of the Image’ and wrote this: https://christopherwlog.wordpress.com/2016/11/20/photographing-the-unseen-some-thoughts-on-reading-roland-barthes-rhetoric-of-the-image/
I was ready to make a list of at least seven ideas.
- things seen in a very personal way, e.g faces in patterns, shapes in clouds
- things not normally seen, e.g. the view from inside a washing machine as it’s being filled
- things never seen before, e.g. a new image
- a label on a scarf whose meaning is hidden from all but me
- dreams
- noise
- a state of mind
- an internal dialogue
My list didn’t immediately inspire me so I began to look further https://christopherwlog.wordpress.com/2016/11/25/thinking-about-photographing-the-unseen-25-11-16/
Now I had so many ideas churning about that I felt the need to ask my tutor for advice. I sent her this: https://christopherwlog.wordpress.com/2016/12/05/thinking-about-photographing-the-unseen-05-12-16/
Her reply directed me to look at Hockney’s ‘Joiners’, and Sophie Calle’s work, and to dig further into Barthes’ Camera Lucida. I bought a copy. His Proustian analysis of photography made me less afraid of a very personal response. The conclusion to Barthes’ book set me free to be irrational, a difficult thing for one whose first love in Philosophy was Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. He says he realised “that there was a sort of link (or knot) between Photography, madness, and something whose name I did not know.” Barthes concludes, “Photography can be [mad or tame]: tame if its realism remains relative, tempered by aesthetic or empirical habits …; mad if this realism is absolute and, so to speak, original, obliging the loving and terrified consciousness to return to the very letter of Time.” (3) Reading about Sophie Calle set me free to be very personal/Proustian on my own account and to explore the use of text much further.
I decided to evoke the nostalgia of time passing. Each picture is about remembering. I chose images which would allow some kind of narrative from childhood to the present day. My old school scarf was bought in 1962 when I went away to a boarding school. My nightmares about that time are still very vivid. I left the image in colour to give it a louder voice than a black and white treatment. A close up of the label was enough to evoke a powerful memory in me. The stone that turned out to have a fossil inside evokes a magical moment. I chose to include two pictures, one of a crack in the stone and one of the stone revealing its secret. These images are monochrome to concentrate the attention on the object without distraction and also to suggest a past, pre-colour, event. The scan of a picture my mother took when I was three years old evokes a much more pleasant memory than the scarf. It was also a magical moment, my first understanding of being photographed. The photograph of the lady sitting in front of the chart and the small skeleton was taken in a rediscovered roof space of a church. It is an image of the past and rediscovery. Is it a memento mori or a carpe diem? The picture of Louise was taken at the same time and, like the images of the stone, is the second part of a single memory. The last image, is to round off the series making a bookend with the scarf. I decided to keep it monochrome. The original colours are intense and to mute them would draw attention to the treatment. I prefer the simplicity of the monochrome image.
(1) cit. in Jeffrey, I, (2011) How to Read a Photograph. London. Thames and Hudson
(3) Barthes, R. trans Howard, R, (2000) Camera Lucida. London. Vintage Classics
Chris Whittle 