Photography: "The Way I See It"

Some semi-structured thoughts on the medium of photography

By Dr. Martin Douglas Hendry

Introduction

Following on from the last piece I wrote for this website – and in preparation for the creation of new work – I feel it is important to record what exactly interests me about photography at this given time and how this anchors my investigation and practice.

Photography, as previously stated, is something that is both:

1. perceptibly “real” (when we see a photograph we take what we see to be “real” or derived from reality, until further inspection or critical enquiry suggests otherwise)
2. Inherently “unreal” (images reduce the flow of time to a static “slice”, render 3D space on a flat plane and represent reality through certain moments or framings that are privileged over others).

This “unreal”-ness is inescapable, and all comes before any further manipulations are made to an image.

The “realness” of how a photographic image initially appears convincing to an audience is equally inescapable – with such escape requiring vigilant cynicism of the medium.

In this way, photography always has an aspect which touches upon what I refer to as representational ethics. These are the moral principles surrounding truth and untruth in photographic images and the ways they are put to use.

An aspect of this is broadly explored in my previous piece, wherein I problematise what we capture and what we don’t capture, and why this is important. I recommend that you read that piece as its conclusions become relevant to this post and the hypothesis it presents.

In this piece, I extend this conception to the practice of photography and examine what it is that compels all of us to create and share photographic images with each other.

When one creates a photograph, it is to say “this is the world (but how I see it).”

When such a statement is made it is inherently an expression of untruth (or incomplete description of reality) which is presented and at least initially taken as truth.

In such chimeric statements, several interesting things are occurring which are worthy of formal enquiry.

In many ways, the observations that follow are somewhat obvious.

However, this does not mean that they are unimportant, and (along with those in my previous writing) their significance underpin the essential interest that I will take forward into new work.

Note on the traditional photographic performance

The performance of photography places the photographer in a spatial and temporal context (a certain space and time).

Within this context, they use the camera to capture an image (or series of images) – reducing their experience of an event containing certain image-subjects in the form of a photograph.

Photography, as an intentful and selective act, places emphasis on the image-subject as significant to the photographer.

Thus the image-subject is conferred as “important” in some way to the photographer and crucially, especially so in the state it was at the specific time that the image was captured.

As a consequence, it naturally follows that photography is widely used to capture valued image-subjects at special moments, often which would often be impossible to reproduce (e.g. life events).

Within the field of personal photography, rituals can be observed surrounding events such as:

• Weddings
• The birth of a child
• Graduation
• The purchase of a new car/house
• Other significant life events

In such cases, for many, it would be unimaginable that such events could pass without photographic images recording the subject as it was. (For example, imagine restaging a wedding, should the photographer’s equipment have failed – “perfect” images of a recreated wedding would still likely still be viewed with relative disdain).

Equally unimaginable (and as a consequence of the socialisation of photography) would be to withhold such images rather than distribute them amongst various peer groups.

Thus, we reduce life in its multiplicity to significant photographic surfaces for distribution and communication to our valued others.

Photography and minutiae

We also see smaller day-to-day events routinely captured and distributed in the realms of socialised digital photography at scale.

These smaller moments harbour their own significance to the individual. Indeed, even the most banal moments that life has to offer are in themselves non-repeatable and have their own social currency in certain circumstances.

These may now find their relevant and appreciative audience through instantaneous sharing of self-destructing images such as on Snapchat, or image creation and sharing via private messaging apps such as WhatsApp.

Broadly speaking, it can be understood that the increased production, distribution (and thus capacity for more immediate gratification) has resulted in today’s explosive economy of image-sharing – elevating everyday subjects to varying degrees of social significance amongst broader strata of social group than in historic practices of personal photography.

(It is notable, that in earlier personal photographic cultures, images might be placed within albums to certify and bond familial groups. This motivation remains largely the same but has expanded in magnitude and scope. Such historical and principal drives within personal photography are analysed within my thesis, which can be read here.)

What is interesting in all instances, however, is what fundamentally compels us to create images and what underpins all of these practices (from the highly ritualistic and traditional to the private, offhand and candid).

We know that this is an act which is inherently “social” in its desired outcomes – but how exactly (and to what extent) is this achieved in any given photographic act?

Photographic semiotics, “shared sight” and its significance

When we create a photographic image, we seek to reproduce how we see an image-subject at a given time, expressing through the photograph this act of seeing to an audience.

The camera does much of the heavy lifting in this descriptive act (when compared to painting, for example); it is a largely “objective” mechanism, which when pointed at an image subject will capture its appearance realistically in the form of a photographic image.

Semiotically speaking, the photograph may be primarily considered an “index” of the moment and spatial relationships. This is akin to seeing a footprint in snow, which evidences a foot having imprinted prior. (For more information on the three modalities of signs, click here – each are relevant to photography in varying degrees).

In this case, light “imprints” upon a photosensitive surface, and the resulting image is perceived as evidence of the depicted image-subject and event having occurred. This has a phenomenological aspect, as images typically emulate sight in an immediately convincing way. Both that of the photographer at the point of capture, but also in its congruence with how the audience perceives the world through their own vision. Simply put, at a glance, photographic images look “real” to an audience.

Photographs may equally communicate meaning via iconic and symbolic means – but primacy clearly comes through its perceived link to the spatio-temporal phenomena from which it is derived – and the proximity the image has phenomenologically to sight.

Therefore, via the completed photographic act, the photographer implicitly desires the audience to see “the thing” exactly how they saw it when they captured it hinging on the indexical “link” the photograph has to the moment of capture.

Furthermore, when creating an image, a standard procedure is undertaken, which involves, seeing, deciding, operating (the camera) and continuing to participate in the wider context of the events captured in the image.

Whilst inherent to the majority of photographic images much of this extensive procedure is not explicit within the image -. or requires a formal understanding of photography (e.g. optics), the behaviour of light, and spatial relationships to parse.

The emphasis for the typical, immediate and untrained eye of the audience is on seeing.

Thus the photographic image does not say, “my experience looked like this“, as much as it insists “my experience was this“. With a single moment totemised as representative of a whole experience (synecdoche).

This in effect mystifies such an experience in its totality, offering only a convincing static pane from which to comprehend the event in question.

This “loss in translation” between reality and the tokenistic image belies a discrepancy between the compulsive motive of the image-creator and their act and the capability for the audience to fully comprehend the image-creator’s total experience.

Shared sight and intimacy

As discussed in the previous piece, embodying someone’s sight can be political, as we occupy how they look upon subjects and aspects of the psychology that this entails.

Equally, it is an inherently intimate act insofar it is tantamount to sharing an internal perspective of the photographer at a moment of importance, looking upon image-subjects they deem significant.

Thus the photographic act may be an act that seeks, through a shared and intentful perspective upon an image-subject, to draw an image-creator and their audience closer through an attempt at a shared phenomenological experience.

Some of the following statements follow and reinforce this logic.

Image-subjects of perceived significance are presented to audiences in a way that the image creator looks upon them.

Therefore, not only do we share the essential perspective of the image-creator but moreover their intentful and purposeful perspective on the things they deem important. This is, in some sense, a personal disclosure.

The very act of seeing “as someone else” might be considered an incredibly intrusive act if achieved by any other means.

As such the drive the enable others to see and comprehend as we do is as remarkable as it is understated in the medium.

It is my belief that the desire to “share sight” and communicate our understanding of the world is what compels humans in all photographic acts. After all, humans are social creatures and wish to be understood by their peers, what better way to “show”, rather than tell?

Such a motive is inherent to all forms of communication, of course. Humans paint, write, speak, act all to communicate some perspective of the world to each other.

What interests me however is the extent to which photography is a perfectly imperfect tool for this purpose.

Photographs as tokens

Whilst the image creator may be compelled by the implicit incentive of sharing their view of the world with others, to audiences this intimacy may be lost.

Whilst photography emulates the vision of the photographer, it is consumed through the audience’s own act of seeing. Thus the reception of an image (which is phenomenologically congruent with a person’s own experience) is embedded within the audience’s own sensory timeline.

Such lack of distinction between our own vision and that of the photographer may have underpinned some of the formal aspects of photography in the past (e.g. black and white as the status quo, or Roland Barthes emphasis on “the punctum” within valuable photographs – insofar as the image must contain something to provoke an escape or revelation from the audience’s typical continuum of seeing. In such instances it can become clear that, as an audience, we are inhabiting someone else’s perspective).

The absent information pertaining to the creation of the image, means that the indexical qualities of the image only serve to mystify the event captured to the audience. The information that is contained within the image is an apparation – extracted and abstracted from the spatio-temporal context from which it was created. The facts of the matter remain only in the mind of the image creator who may elucidate the image – but who themselves may forget or incorrectly recollect as time marches on.

The communicative payload of a photograph is dwarfed by what is omitted from the image – whether by design or not.

The inescapable mystery that surrounds an image, without its wider context of creation. is equally filled with suppositions and subjectivities brought by the audience’s own experiences and perspectives of the world.

(Humans as problem-solving and narrative-driven creatures will inherently seek to solve such mysteries – each bringing their own palette to the canvas in order to “complete the picture” to their own satisfaction.)

Thus through the deviations and manipulations inherently present in photography (and which diverge it from reality proper), the desire to “share sight” and experience with others remains wholly unfulfilled for image creators – with audiences often either subsuming the image into their own sensory timeline; or, if conceptualising the image, inevitable superimposing their own understanding of the given event over that of the creator.

Regardless, this desire to be intimately understood by others and photography’s seemingly convenient capability to fulfil it remains a source of continued compulsion for creators, regardless.

Photographic images strike and convince us as real. But are brittle when drawn under a critical eye.

To put it plainly, photographs may only act as tokens of our perception of the world.

It may be that as a result of this tokenistic expression, photographers “lean into” the authorial possibilities offered by photography.

Instead of representing reality in totality (which is an impossibility); via so many means, the image-creator elevates a single instance to heightened importance via a catalogue of methods and actions. These may be subtle, in merely selecting one moment over another, or complex and technical in the composition, processing and juxtaposition of images.

Herein the precarious and initially perceived objectivity of “shared sight” is replaced by the sly subjective capabilities of the medium.

Significance

Crucially, we have previously identified that photography is unable to wholly represent the world as it exists, despite the innumerable convincing surfaces photographic images present. In images, total reality in all of its banal normalcy is often conspicuous in its absence. Photographic surfaces remain shallow and impenetrable insofar as they hide reality’s constantly shifting and murky depths.

Equally, we find that to photograph is a compelled act, wherein the photographer wishes to bridge a gap between their experience of salient reality to distant audiences. However, even in this attempt to recreate their “seeing” or “experiencing” of an event the photograph falls short – only, ironically, able to represent a small (albeit implicitly significant) part of the overall picture of their internal experience of the captured phenomenon.

The possibility compels the photographer to create tokens derived from reality and imbue them with further meaning various authorial decisions (e.g. from simple selection and emphasis to editing and complex deviations).

As such, photography operates and negotiates in the liminal space between reality in all of it’s inescapable and innumerable phenomenology, and that of the image-creator’s epistemé, selectively captured in the form of chimeric tokens; at the same time, immediately obvious and inescapably esoteric in their meaning.

The medium is as ineffective at faithfully rendering and communicating the internal reality of the photographer, as it is the external reality of phenomena at large. In both instances, there is a “lack” which is addressed by image-creator and audience alike in their interaction with the photograph.

In my view, photographs are thus akin to recollections taken from a dream after waking. Such recollections, like photographs, are characterised by their convincing, if incomplete, nature (and consequently demand explanation from all sides).

The true art of photography thus lies in emphasis. This emphasis addresses the “lack” within the image, by amplifying a certain aspect over all others and charging it with subjective significance. This emphasis may be conscious or unconscious, but it is always present and inescapable.

Herein the image-creator’s desire to be understood can be parsed in conjunction with what is, and is not captured and the way that this “lack” has been addressed via emphases. (Accurate parsing, ironically, requires an intimate knowledge of the image-creator, their motives and subjectivities.)

Yet it is this compulsion to share one’s experience of the world (and administer an authorial aspect that addresses the “lack” inherent in photographs) – which strikes at the heart of the matter.

Each photographic image contains this tension, and such tension is exponentially multiplied within the *image-world at large.

Conclusion

To conclude, how this conception of photography will influence the series of work that I create moving forward remains to be seen (such influence will be present within notes coinciding with work).

Despite all this, it remains that photography, its communicative duality and the problematisation of its use within wider society – remains the absolute fulcrum of my interest.

* “Image-world” referring to the world as it is recorded through photographic images en masse. Such an “image-world” appears analogous to our own – yet deviates through the various implicit and explicit tangents outlined above. An example of a specific image-world might be the world as represented through Instagram, which through associated practices inherent to the platform and embedded culture of use clearly deviates from reality. This “image-world” is one such which exists within the overall image-world.

by Dr. Martin Douglas Hendry

All content copyright Dr. Martin Douglas Hendry (2019)