Kept Light Photography

Near Martha's Vineyard

I made a presentation to a small group of friends related to the art of photography. The presentation mostly focused on the introductory text from John Szarkowsky’s “The Photographer’s Eye”. During the presentation at some point, I made a statement to the effect that “photography does not have narrative” ability which was questioned by several members. Although we spoke about it for a short while, the question lingered in my mind, prompting me to attempt to articulate my thoughts in this entry. 

The dictionary entry for “narrative” in the American Heritage Dictionary is:

  1. A narrated account; a story.
  2. The art, technique, or process of narrating.

Now, here begins the confusion I think. When we look at a photograph we see an object, the photograph, begging to be perceived. Perception being an organized process, we attempt to relate various components in the photograph to each other as it makes sense to us. This is necessary to perceive the image contained in the photograph, as well as any input we may receive by our senses. This organization process may result in a long explanation of who is looking where, why, and what else is being affected by the other elements, and so on. This “telling” of what we perceive must not be confused with narrating a story with a photograph.

Narrative, telling of a series of events, people, places, objects, and relationships among them, starting at some arbitrary point in time and ending at another typically requires the use of a medium that can inherently span passage of time, in a meaningful way. Written words or cinematic presentations are probably the strongest candidates for this. Photography, although it may cover some passage of time, is typically about a time frame of seconds and fractions of a second. And because of this extremely short period of time, can only tell of a part of the world during a fraction of a second where the “story” had been unfolding until the photographer decided to click the shutter and continued after the picture was captured. What the photographer wanted to say can only be transmitted for an expected meaning. If the photographer wanted to tell a story, he or she needs to go beyond meaning and maintain a continuity of a series of “meanings.”

This brings us to the meaning of “meaning”. Again, the American Heritage Dictionary tells us:

  1. Something that is conveyed or signified; sense or significance
  2. Something that one wishes to convey, especially by language
  3. An interpreted goal, intent, or end
  4. Inner significance

If I want to share the beauty or the fragrance of a rose, I can show it to you and we share a common understanding of that plant and some of its attributes. It is not too difficult to bring a rose to show anyone. But, what if I wanted to share the enormous size of an elephant, its skin texture, etc.? Well, as awkward as it may be, we can go to a zoo to see and touch an elephant, again to establish a commonness of our minds. As you can imagine, this process of object-oriented communication of meaning becomes quickly cumbersome. Then, we resort to using pictures (icons of things), and words (symbols of things). So, if I want to convey the idea of an elephant (as I just have done) I write “e-l-e-p-h-a-n-t” and show it to you. But, what if you do not speak English? Obviously, I have encoded what is in my mind into that symbol that we call a word. But, in order for it to have “meaning” it needs to trigger the idea of the animal we call “elephant” in your mind. It should be easy to infer from here that the “meaning” is not in the word but in the mind of the receiver, the “meaning” belongs to the receiver.

There are many things in the world, say an aardvark or Zinga, that we think we know what they are. We may have seen pictures of that thing, read about that thing, but until we actually see the real thing, all we can attribute as meaning is what we have as a virtual understanding of that thing. The real understanding of the object can only happen after seeing the thing itself. (This is something photography inherently does. I may try to say a few things about that in a different entry.)

The fact that we ascribe a “meaning” to a photograph and that meaning requiring a long paragraph does not imply that we have “narrated” what the photographer intended. The narrative reflects the mind of the teller, can change according to the teller’s wish and belongs to the teller. The photographer, as the teller of a story or giving an account of an event, may try very hard, but the medium does not afford that continuity, that longer time reference to succeed in narrating. This does not mean that the photograph will be devoid of meaning, it will simply not narrate a longer story.

I liken the narrative to a running stream of water, it has continuity and longevity. Photography, on the other hand, is like a leaf that I may pick up from the running stream, it has disruption and “shortevity” (obviously my term.) Narration runs, photography stops that and steals a moment, like picking paint flakes from a wall. That piece of paint flake, that photograph, may very well trigger a multitude of meanings in the minds of many viewers. After all, the meaning belongs to them. The photograph may merely act as a reflector of their own thoughts.

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Comments

  1. Cemal, look at your beautiful picture in the beginning of your page, the one with a boat leaving a circular mark on the water – it tells a story, which means narrate, what about multiple exposure photographs, or long time exposure. What about diptych, triptych, etc? Even a split second shot of a bullet exiting an apple with visible point of entry tells us a story, rarely a photograph doesn’t correspond in someway to the past IMO, which is enough to be narrative isn’t it? Or I am confused.

  2. Artur, when you look at that photograph on the banner do you know how I took it, whether the boat was out of control, what happened the moment after I took that photograph, or who the person is driving the boat? These are just a few of the shortcomings of the “narrative” capability of this photograph, and perhaps many others. Attempts have been made, as you said with diptych, triptych, panels, story-boards, and so on, to use photography as a narrative medium. Consisting of extreme slices of life, even the time exposure or time lapse photograph included, there are far greater time gaps between each image than there are in each photographs. Film and written works are far better in the narrative mode than photography as they provide a temporal continuum and establish relationships.

    Meaning in photographs is a totally different story of course. As I said in my entry, narrative needs to belong to the photographer, the story teller, where the meaning belongs to the viewer, the interpreter of meanings.

    • Patty, it is not whether photoraphs have a story or not but whether they narrate a story. Meaning, it is in the mind of the viewer not in the message.

  4. But surely as an artist you have the ability to create and manipulate a perspective and with that comes narrative. Yes we adapt our own connotations to these photographs but the word “Ellipsis” means a break in the narrative leaving the audience to fill in the gaps themselves, this is widely used in media so if nothing else our pictures leave the audience to feel the gaps in the narrative, thus saying there is a narrative?

    • The “story” and “narrative” require more information than a single photograph can carry. We never know what happened the moment before or the moment after the photograph was taken, which may be a split-second. What you are referring to, I believe, is the viewers’ imagination creating these missing moments and along with the illusion that the photograph has a narrative. If this is the perspective you are looking from, then the narrative belongs to the viewer, not to the photograph. Words, movies, are far more suitable for narrative than a single moment captured.

  5. A single photography can not be a narrative: as the author of this post describes, a narrative must have a beginning, middle and end (to name just three important dynamics of narrative) and a single photograph captures only a slice of time from a larger (more complex) truth hidden beyond the borders of the photograph forever. An interesting subject that has fueled debate for years. If I may suggest, a very authoritative and intellectual talk on this subject can be found on David Campbell web site I feel brings an important and insightful discussion worth engaging. https://www.david-campbell.org/topics/

    Kind regards,
    Lance A. Lewin

    • Thank you Lance for stopping by and adding your thoughts to the long running conversation. Since I wrote this post, I have read David Campbell’s conversations on the subject as well as those before my post. It is a hard to grasp subject for many as the concept of narrative blurs into meaning they see in the photograph, which is another slippery slope.

      Take care, and thanks again,

      Cemal