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Thinking about Photography

This is a post from the weareoca.com archive. Information contained within it may now be out of date.
 
I have been thinking about thinking about photography quite a lot recently.  In an interview I recently did with Jan Dibbets he encouraged students to stop making photographs, to think about photography and then to make photographs.  The next day I led a seminar for a study group in Thames Valley on semiotics and now I’m looking at photographers who are making work about photography using photography.

‘Pep Talk’ by Siegfried Ip

(I recommend you click on these images to see them bigger.)

I wanted to highlight OCA student Siegfried Ip’s recent work in progress for TAoP which tracks her thinking about how to make a narrative without text.  She wanted to show what goes on behind the scenes at a female football match at the same time as asking herself ‘What is narrative?’. In her own words:

This project is the TAoP assignment 5, under the working title “The Real Playmarkers”. Technically two of my previous submissions of assignment 5 were rejected, so I am very curious as to what a “proper” narrative is supposed to be. I started this project with my tutor ‘s comment in mind. Namely, ‘a narrative is supposed to have a start, progression and ending to carry the viewer through a journey. Therefore, there must be a temporal linkage between the photographs that this progression can be seen visually.’ I don’t think I get very far in showing temporal progression visually, but I am very interested in giving visual clues, to tell a story without any text.

‘Team Formation’ by Siegfried Ip

Here’s what I love about this.  Since Barthes, the academic photography world has come to collectively agree (ironically making it myth which Barthes warns us against) that images are polysemous and work best when they are not fixed to a particular meaning.  In the art world there is a snobbery around images that are too prescriptive, too anchored.  Siegfied is cleverly challenging this by doing the very thing we are not supposed to.  The outcome is that she very obviously and yet also very suspiciously leads our minds into a story which may or may not be as it really happened.
All photographs have a limit, a frame.  What is beyond the frame has always been a point of interest in photography thinking.  By giving us snippets of what is happening directly outside the frame Siegfried plays with how much information we believe we have about the situation in question.  The images are presented in such a way that it appears as though we know exactly what is going on behind the scenes of a football game.   We ‘know’ what is written on the white board.  We ‘know’ the man is talking to a set of girls sitting on a bench, looking up at him, raptly attentive to his words.
Over to Siegfried again;

In the photograph where Bill (the manager) was writing the team formation on the white board, it was not clear that he was writing the team formation at all. In order to make it clear, I put it next to another photograph that showed the formation. However, the original photograph was not as photogenic as I hoped. So I choose the team formation photograph I took a week later. Although these pictures can be put together to tell a story in a very unambiguous way, strictly speaking they are not taken at the same time, or even same day. The other example at the briefing, it is not possible to get another side (the players reaction) without moving across the changing room, but it will be too disturbing for other people. Therefore those two pictures are taken 3 days apart.

Which brings me back to Jan Dibbets who said “All photographs are lies”.  When you take time to actually think about photographs, they are too slippery to be tied down. So I suppose Barthes was right but the fun bit for us is to undo the knots like Siegfried has begun to do here.  I am even starting to wonder, if in the eyes of the right viewer, is it is even possible for a photograph to be anchored? Do they have minds of their own?


Posted by author: Sharon

33 thoughts on “Thinking about Photography

    • Yeah… I read the interview too, and found it surprisingly upfront…
      The following bits made me either go (smile) or ‘what the …?’
      > … then the imitations begin
      > … hardly anyone is making photography that is interesting (to me…)
      > … every photograph is a lie…
      I don’t agree with all, but at least it creates questions that I need to back up for myself.
      Oh, and my favourite part is: Good bye and don’t come back…
      Well done Siegfried! Great to see TAOP people get a mention on here… keep up the momentum now… looking forward to see where you do next!
      🙂

    • It is an interesting interview but when Jan says …
      “Every photograph is a lie. It doesn’t represent anything. ”
      This does not make grammatical sense – when he says “it” he is presumably referring to photography rather than the photograph – it would surely be absurd to say the photograph does not represent anything.
      Its’ all a bit too clever for me. “Thinking Photography” OK but “thinking about photography” – not sure I have the time for that !!

  • I’ve the problem of believing that a photograph is a lie or indeed that the camera lies. It cannot by itself be something that it is impossible for IT to be. I’m more inclined to think that it is the maker who, if that is the intent, is the liar – not the actual photograph. At times is the viewer who sees what it wants to see according to its own experiences and prejudice.

  • How can a photograph lie when it’s just a record from a mechanical instrument? There has to be an intention to tell a lie and that implies some kind of brain. If it’s something like CCTV then it just records an image of what is in front of its lens. Of course an operator can do something such as change the date/time but then that goes back to a brain.
    To tell a lie you have to know that that’s what you’re doing. Presumably you know what the truth is (or what you believe to be the truth according to your beliefs and attitudes etc). I agree with Yiann.

    • I think the photograph appears to have a mind of it’s own. Obviously this is not because it is capable of telling a lie, but because of the tricks it plays on our minds, and the social conventions that go with what we know to be a photograph (namely that it ‘recorded’ something that was actually there). What I’m suggesting is that a photograph is part of a wider cultural phenomenon than 1. a machine (camera), 2. a piece of paper, 3. a record, 4. a photographer’s imagination or intention, 5. the viewers point of view. It’s all those things and more… therefore by default it takes on a mysterious identity of it’s own and can’t be pinned down.

        • Thanks for the clarity Sharon!
          We tend to project our ideas onto the photograph. A classic example of this is perhaps the charity campaign (I am not sure the name of the charity but it was in the UK) that used actors to create life like examples of poor people. There was public outcry at the apparent exploitation of the innocent poor and the charity were forced to take down the posters.
          A photograph can only lie perhaps when it is combined with a false caption.

  • That’s an interesting interview, it is so easy to fall into the trap of thinking about “what” rather than “how” I’ve just been thinking about that myself in the last few days.
    Well done Siegfried, it makes me think a bit about film narratives and how they work through having more than one viewpoint – sometimes filmed by more than one camera, sometimes by repeated takes…? I think i’m right with that anyway:-/

  • I like what Dibbets says here …
    “I think the great time for photography is still to come. Photography is the medium of the future, believe me. It has yet to develop. It has a very short history and it is in need of ideas, of thinking about what to do with it and how. “

  • There is something I am curious about. If I go out and take a photograph, say just a snap shot of my neighbourhood. Then I realize that I need to submit it for an assignment, so I come up with an interesting title (or even description) to go along with it. Although seeing the image alone might not spark your enthusiasm, I am such a master writer that the title spark your imagination of what the underlying message this image is carrying, even I might not be thinking of anything when I took that image.
    I am not saying everybody is doing it, but it is doable. I don’t want to use the word “lies”. However, can the image say something to you without text/title/contextual material? Is it okay to “guide” you through an image to arrive to a particular viewpoint with text? Then, is it okay if I “guide” you with no text but sequence of images? But what if I am putting two images taken at different time, even different place, or even different event together to construct a story that potentially is not even true? At what point can we tell these series of photographs are truly connected, apart from our imagination is trying to make sense of the sequence by linking them. And at what point can we tell the artist’s statement actually has something to do with the work, apart from we (audiences) are working hard to make the connection?

  • “But what if I am putting two images taken at different time, even different place, or even different event together to construct a story that potentially is not even true?”. I would say yes you can. Artists – writers, Painters and photographers have been doing that for a very long time. Two fine current examples of doing that are in the Photographer’s Gallery now. The Afronauts and Broomberg and Chanarin’s reworking of Brecht’s War Primer. You might say the War Primer itself was an example of that before BC got to work on it. If the story you want to tell can be communicated in the way in which you intended – when you put the work together – then surely yes. It matters not that the images have a disparate source, and in BC’s case they are not even taken by them.
    It is the artist who makes the connection; you bring the narrative together in such a way as to deliver what it is that you want to deliver – and if you can do that, if you can communicate though your chosen medium at whatever level then good luck to you. I suspect that is why, as students, we are encouraged to keep taking photographs, as you never know what might turn up.

    • Then I have this question. What is the most valuable part in a photograph? It seems to me that the photograph is like a red dot on the canvas. On its own it has little meaning, or it opens to almost any meaning. It is the way we, the makers, guide the viewers to think of it a certain way provide its purpose of existence. Therefore, may I say that a photograph is a meaningless piece of paper? It is actually our writing skill, presentation skill that get the viewers’ imagination to run wild, while this piece of paper is just there for the imagination to anchor, or people can pretend they are anchoring their thought there.

  • I think the big conceptual stumbling block for most students is to stop ‘accepting’ the truth/reality of a photographic image. Just because i take a photograph of a pipe…..”ce n’est pas un pipe”.
    The photograph is so embedded in our lives we merely accept it’s authenticity, hence the need to stop taking photographs and to think about taking photographs, i am very supportive of any such dialogue.
    There has been a super thread about the use of ‘art speak’ to support work on the textiles forum.

    • Thanks Mary, I really like the Magritte connection! Do you have the link to the Art speak thread?

        • Thanks. Interesting. At the end of the day good writing is good writing. I don’t think a deliberate rebellion against artspeak is the answer as so often it results in spoon feeding the viewer and reducing the art work to an overly simplistic version of itself – doing it and the artist a disservice. Industry experts and members of the public see through blagging, of course, if it isn’t reflected in the work, but just because you use art speak, doesn’t mean you are a fraud.

  • I have found this an interesting discussion – a preparation for the symposium at Cardiff tomorrow which is on The Photograph
    “Photography” is something about which much can and is said yet it eludes definition most of the time; the photograph is more viable, easier to relate to. As Mary rightly says, “I think the big conceptual stumbling block for most students is to stop ‘accepting’ the truth/reality of a photographic image” and hence “art speak” results. Not just students – it is a common misunderstanding.
    Sometimes there seems to be over-dependence on the intellect and yet art/photography has the potential to show us something beyond our confining thought processes even if it uses concepts to do that. (or is this art speak again!?)

  • Great debate going on and brilliant post. As a tutor ‘to teach is to learn twice’ differing philosophies and engaging with challenging ideas about photography as you progress is always worth it. This is one of the distinct strengths of the OCA for me. There are some high level artists/photographers (and students !) on here all contributing to the debate.
    May I recommend Errol Morris and his book ‘believing is seeing’. As a documentary film maker as well as a photographer, his thoughts are always provocative and inspiring. His comments on the ‘indexicality’ of photography – both its strength and one if its problems, simply makes the subject more interesting. Its easy. Yet difficult.
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/video/2011/dec/26/errol-morris-photography-video

    • Thanks for the link Garry. Very important for documentary / reportage photography to be challenged in this respect.

  • Maybe one can say the photograph is a conceit !?
    For an account of my day at the symposium on The Photograph in Cardiff …
    http://amanostudy.wordpress.com/2013/05/04/the-photograph-a-symposium-at-the-national-museum-cardiff/
    The following excerpt refers to the point Jan made about stopping taking photographs to give one time to consider what photography is or might be …
    “There is also a need to think about photographing rather than merely clicking yet to study photography and then start making photographs is a misunderstanding. One needs to consider what one is doing. There is a danger in thinking too much about the photographic process beforehand though – one needs to find the balance between thinking and clicking.”

    • I hope it was worthwhile and that your conclusions of making rather than taking are helpful for your own pictures too. Perhaps of interest to you that Errol Morris also mentions conceit in his video (link above).

      • I did watch the Errol Morris video so that is where the idea probably came from !?
        “Making rather than taking photographs” is a bit of a cliche but it is worth putting into practice.
        I think that doing the OCA photography BA is a way of pausing to consider the meaning of photography which might better inform one’s practice; there does seem to be a danger though of becoming too knowledgeable, to see the trees and not the wood …
        I found the symposium supportive as I do the OCA and virtual discussions like these.

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