Definitions

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[25Jul21] As context, I have just begun the last assignment in I&P.

Every once in a while a definitions springs to mind, most recently on vernacular photography. I plan to gather them here, retrospectively adding the old ones as I come across them.

[26Jul21] The thoughts are likely to be more-or-less derivative, but none are knowingly plagiaristic. They express my views at the time of writing, given my then state of knowledge and experience. As with the gazes and poses thought, I occasionally get a flash when an aspect of photography snaps into focus and then beat that idea to death with subsequent clarification. As the BBC often says of old repeats, they reflect the standards of the time (and also, in these cases, of my time of life).

[31Aug21] I have added some links to other pages. This dilutes the purpose of this page but aids site navigation.

I am approaching a Unified Theory of Photography.

Gazes & Poses

[29Jun21] I wrote in the blog yesterday and today,

I'm working through Barthes' Lucida, currently chs.32-33. A thought — photography comprises poses and gazes.
Discuss.
At first sight that seems to cover all the transactions, object, photographer, channel, viewer.

A scan for both terms hasn't coughed up much, though there is a paper in OCA that pertains, The Photograph as an Intersection of Gazes: The Example of National Geographic by Catherine Lutz and Jane Collins

And on Jstor there's Fictions of the Pose: Facing the Gaze of Early Modern Portraiture by Harry Berger Jr.

Berger, H. "Fictions of the Pose: Facing the Gaze of Early Modern Portraiture." Representations, no. 46 (1994): 87-120. Accessed June 29, 2021. doi:10.2307/2928780.

Lutz, C & Collins, J (1991) The Photograph as an Intersection of Gazes: The Example of National Geographic. Visual Anthropology Review. Volume 7 No. 1 Spring 1991 , pp. 134-149.

On the evening of 29th, I worked on Ch.33 of the Barthes and wrote,

The four elements of photography, as I currently see it, are object, photographer, channel and viewer. There are are poses and gazes operating at various levels in the photo-transaction. [17Sep21] There's the physical photograph too (or digital etc.) - the channel output.

Sitting in the middle of these actors and actions is the image as artefact in its various forms: the form is usually a function of the channel.

Obviously the object poses (or is posed). In an aware portrait the sitter(s) arrange themselves; in a still life, the objects are arranged by the photographer or another; in a landscape god and / or man (etc.) have that agency; in street photography there will be multiple poses. In the cases of portrait or street, it is immaterial whether the object is aware of the photographer - they are already posing for other purposes.
A sitter might choose (or be directed to) a physical gaze for the camera.

For a particular photograph, the photographer selects the object and its setting [1] and technical and aesthetic choices regarding the image. The practicalities of the image creation will be a deployment of the photographer's gaze. That gaze is conditioned by their (to use Hurn & Jay's phrase, 2000, p.87) "prejudices, emotions [and] history". The context of the photographer's work will be the pose presented to others (audience, objects, employers, dealers - most of these phrases used in the wider sense) in terms of style, voice, vision, intent, feelings, opinions, stances and probably appearance and dress too.

The channel is the means by which a particular image reaches a particular viewer [2]. In the process, the image may 'pass through' many hands and minds, each applying their own gaze and / or pose criteria and in some cases making changes to the image and any associated text. To take two examples,
(a) in a simple case, a parent might photograph a child and post the image on a social media platform to a specific, selective group. Here the child might (or might not) pose and gaze; the parent would gaze in making the image and some posing might occur in selection and editing; the social media platform will probably impose some formatting and content criteria to posts that are a combination of gaze and pose; if the recipient group includes a grandparent and an infertile sibling of the parent, their two gazes applied to the image are likely to be incongruent.
(b) an illustrated newspaper report of a photography exhibition would be subject to the gazes and / or poses of i. the original photographer; ii. the original object; iii the curation process of the exhibition; iv the illustration photographer of the exhibition; v the writer of the report; vi the editorial process of the newspaper; vii each reader of the report (and, to some extent, those who knowingly chose not to read it).

The viewer usually filters the range of images they view by choosing which newspapers and magazines they read, what television programmes they watch, which exhibitions they attend, which online platforms they allow to inhabit them, and so on [3]: these are their choices of where they will apply their gazes and the choices incorporate both elements of posing and the effects of conditioning (see Hurn & Jay, above). When an image has passed through those filters it is subjected to a viewer's gaze.
In examining gazes for Part 3, a single spectator's gaze was identified in the course material, but this view can be refined. One way to differentiate between a spectator's several gazes is to adopt the Barthes approach from Camera Lucida (1980) that I summarised in my essay on punctum,

"viewers' [reactions and] interpretations will be influenced by their own experiences, attitudes and moods and in each case will be on a spectrum from the indifferent (Barthes, 1980, p.16) to the visceral. Barthes coined the terms punctum for the visceral and studium for some mid-point on the spectrum referred to by Batchen (2011, p.12) as "polite interest": Batchen quotes Barthes, "To recognise the studium is inevitably to encounter the photographer's intentions" [that is contestable] and a strong reaction to an unintended aspect of the image is a sign of the punctum reaction."

Conclusion

This approach seems to have relevance on two levels, as a description of the processes involved in the delivery of photographs and as a means of understanding the diversity and complexity of that process.

The rather more important question of whether it is usable and useful in terms of coursework remains to be seen.

Notes

1. or it is selected for him/her by commission or employment in which case the selection and aesthetic considerations will be partly the responsibility of that authority, as delegated to the photographer.

2. In my notes on the purpose of photography (Blog, 20May21) I state

"Photography, in its wider sense, then, will comprise then image-making technology, post-processing, publication (Barthes' channel of transmission) and the various marketplaces."

To which we can add”and all of the parties involved at each stage of the process and the conditioning they bring to their involvement.

3. Additional choices are made within each channel, for example which newspaper sections to read, which groups to join on a social media platform.

Punctum

I have spent quite a lot of time with M. Barthes during I&P. A page is still being worked on.

[25Apr21] The illusory E.J. Walsingham (n.d.) wrote,

I perceive the punctum as a vestigial organ or gland in the cortex, conceptually similar to the appendix or a tonsil. It is occasionally twanged by an experience that might be visual, aural, physical or of some other sensory nature. It resonates in response to the current stimulus and memory of past experiences or conditioning.

Barthes named it in the context of his reactions to a photograph of his late mother: Proust had a comparable reaction to certain biscuits; in Waugh's Sebastian it is embodied by teddy bear.

The punctum probably also operates in response to first experiences that will become personally resonant, such as the visceral realisation of the importance of Beethoven (or Bowie, or gamelan, or whatever music possesses you). It might be where love and faith reside.

E.J. Walsingham Conversations with myself n.d.

The Punctum has always been there, as Fox Talbot implied in The pencil of nature (1844-46) when discussing the craft's charm. Barthes put a name to it in Camera Lucida (1980) and the European photo-cognoscenti adopted it.

All it amounts to is that viewers' interpretations will be influenced by their own experiences, attitudes and moods and in each case will be on a spectrum from the indifferent (Barthes, 1980, p.16) to the visceral. Barthes coined the terms punctum for the visceral and studium for some mid-point on the spectrum referred to by Batchen (2011, p.12) as "polite interest": Batchen quotes Barthes, "To recognise the studium is inevitably to encounter the photographer's intentions" [that is contestable] and a strong reaction to an unintended aspect of the image is a sign of the punctum reaction.

The punctum can generate extreme personal reactions to particular photographs and that is why, as laGrange (2005) paraphrased Sue Sontag (1973),

photographs do not seem strongly bound by the intention of the photographer Sontag, On Photography, quoted in La Grange (2005) p.37

And a similar, complementary but unnamed stimulus probably often drives the output of the photographer, whatever the purpose or meaning of the piece is intended or purported to be, remembering the Coplans dictum,

No other art form rivals photography’s capability to be meaningless, to topple into a void. As a hedge against vacuity, ambitious photographers cloak themselves in a knowledge of art. Coplans essay, Weegee the Famous, in Provocations (1966) pp.205-212

Serious photographers

[1Aug19, retrospective] text

In the development blog for EyV Asg.5 while discussing photographers' niches, I wrote that "subsequent thought will be given to a definition [of a serious photographer]: for now we can run with a photographer that exhibits or seeks to exhibit (though not only on social media)". That was dated 1st August 2019 and I will still stand by it, as at 25Jul21.

Vernacular photography

[24Jul21] In the IP blog.

© Martin Parr
The Leaning Tower of Pisa, 1990
img: worldphoto.org

A definition sprang to mind this morning.

A subject rendered so personally as to be of little immediate interest other than to those involved, their relatives and their friends, typically, Auntie Maud at the Eiffel Tower.

The recent advent and expansion of social media rests on the myth that such interest is now more widespread.

A more generalised interest can be legitimised by the passage of time when an image may be recycled (often as one of many) for sociological or artistic purposes, or very occasionally when one of those present attains subsequent fame or notoriety.

The act of vernacular photography may be the subject of serious photography †, such as Parr's The Leaning Tower of Pisa, 1990

There is a page on the matter.

Why photograph?

This is taken from the C&N blog and the I&PAbout page.

M   y stated ethos in May 2020, during C&N was,

To produce a visual representation of something that merits this attention in such a way as to do the subject object justice.
All these judgements are necessarily subjective and the terms deliberately ambiguous. blog, 16th May

[28Mar21] That is still operative but, mid I&P, I have been fiddling with a rambling, clarificatory codicil.

The last 50 years (?) has commonly been characterised [1] as a move from photographs of towards photographs about. Many of the ‘abouts’ are the photographers themselves, projects exploring or explaining or reflecting their life or experiences, aspirations or imaginations and this has given rise to some significant and original work such as Cindy Sherman’s early self portraits and Nan Goldin’s (somewhat exploitative) depiction of her milieu. But as these base niches have been staked out by the early innovators, subsequent workers have felt forced into increasingly more obscure and convoluted project-conceptions in order to establish their individuality and also, more recently, their concern for particular issues.

As a person of age, I do not feel a particular need to express or explore any aspect of my present, my past or my limited future in this way [2]: I am content to produce ‘photographs of’ in the full and certain knowledge that they will be viewed and interpreted by others entirely subjectively and individually, as is the case for every photograph in existence. [3]

For, as La Grange memorably paraphrased Sue Sontag [4],

photographs do not seem strongly bound by the intention of the photographer Sontag, On Photography, quoted in La Grange (2005) p.37

The process of developing a personal voice is referred to throughout this degree and it becomes something of a Quest. This concerned me until recently, when I resolved the matter to my own satisfaction,

Regarding the 'development of a personal voice', I have in the past struggled to decide what this means. I believe that I have come to terms with this now: if I embrace any subject and task the course directs me towards and approach it in a way that I find appropriate, then I will be using my 'personal voice', and I will leave it to others to define or describe it as necessary. I&P Assignment 2 submission

For PhotoWork (2019) Sasha Wolf asked forty photographers a series of identical questions, including one about their 'natural voice'. Bryan Schutmaat replied,

I'm not sure any photographer really has a natural voice. Photographers train themselves to follow their tastes and visual interests, and so much influence is funnelled through every click of the shutter that it's hard to say what comes naturally and what is learned or imitated. I also don't think our photographic voices and styles are rigid and immutable. Bryan Schutmaat in Wolf's PhotoWork, 2019, p.203

And what is a voice? In my view, part of it is a vaguely recognisable style with some degree of consistency.
A desirable trait is enough new ideas to sustain a practice: for an artist-photographer these might be self-generated; for a working photographer, commissions; for a professional, assignments (e.g. Sherman, Bailey, and early McCullin respectively.
Mostly it is a matter of intention — in order to create coherent bodies of work, it is necessary to set out with some form of intention, however nebulous and to whatever aspect of the photography it applies. What it is not is technique or craft — it is probably necessary to have some technical understanding of or approach to the medium in order to fulfil or deliver on one's intention but that is entirely up to the individual.
One (to me) important thing to note is that a diverse course such as this is not necessarily an ideal vehicle for voice development. If the student has to, in order to meet the course requirements, photograph in circumstances and ways that they would not otherwise do, then while this might force them along new paths that prove fruitful, it also (and arguably to a greater extent) distorts any nascent voice.

1 For example Hill (2021 p.152);

2 I am happy and interested to indulge in this sort of thing ‘to order’ for a course exercise or assignment, such as SqM or Archival intervention, but I am not driven to do so to the extent that some photographers seem to be and it is not my natural mode of self expression or my innate reaction to objects before my lens.

3 Arguably, it is the viewer that turns photographs of into photographs about, and the about, is often the viewers themselves.

4 See the site-wide note here.

Formalism vs Contextualism

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Formalism vs Contextualism

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References

Bloomfield, R (2017) Expressing your vision [EyV]. Barnsley: Open College of the Arts.

Boothroyd, S. and Roberts, K. (2019) Identity and place [I&P]. Barnsley: Open College of the Arts.

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author (year) title [online]. website. Available from url [Accessed nn January 2020].

author, (year) Book Title. Location: Publisher.

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author (year) Title. Newspaper. Date. pages.