Documentary & portraiture photography

Image and text: Beginners | Intermediate | Advanced - 1 2 3 4 5

Advanced Part 3 of 5

Visualization by the artist is a primary tool. The realization of an idea by a photographer is limited to their sensibility to visual relationships that the artist creates or manipulates. Comprehension of such work is dependent on values that are recognizable at the instant, even if at another time the values are changed by different circumstances. Recognition is the key to understanding of work viewed. Looking at a photograph is a new experience, and that new experience is compared with information held as memory. Recognition is a comparison between the self after having seen and compared new information, with the old self before the new experience.

The strength of experience affects the storage of the experience, its strength changing it from short term memory to long term memory. This strength is measured by the effect of the experience in the long term. An experience that is unpleasant is quickly forgotten. This recognition of experience and transformation into long term memory requires emotional or intellectual intensity to raise the experience above the normal. The artist is motivated to give us experiences that elevate their work into our memory through emotional triggers, giving us a unique contact with the artist and the work. The successful artist reaches us individually through a relationship via the work. This works both ways, as the artist needs a contribution from the viewer, through persuasion or preparation, whether the viewer is aware of this device or not. These triggers convey the message, and stimulate the response in the viewer.

Words are a trigger mechanism - as well as the dictionary meaning there is a meaning that is not fixed, but shifts subtly with emphasis and juxtaposition. Recognising signals and triggers is a process of comparing similarity or difference based on individuality. Photographs are also a trigger mechanism, for while they have no underlying meaning on their own like words have a dictionary reference, they elicit a response. The combination of words and pictures provides a drama. It is a deliberate attempt to dilute or compliment each art form. The single word has one meaning, the photograph on its own has its own intrinsic meaning - the combination of the two changes the meanings of both word and photograph, and forms a third level of meaning where each element can be viewed as separate, but also part of the greater work simultaneously.

With the inclusion of words in pictures, the drama is a fully constructed intrusion. The strength of the drama lies in the juxtaposition of the two meanings - one for the picture, one for the words, and their relationship - ironic, complimentary or antagonistic.

We can begin to describe works as open or closed. Open works have meanings left outside the boundary of the presented image, a caption is an extension of the meaning, a device to add to the meaning of the picture that necessarily changes the meaning through established social and media understanding. This can take the form of anecdotal evidence, the who, what, where, why, when type of newspaper convention. Using words within the picture frame, leads to a closed work, where the relationship is fixed, the words are part of the image as a whole and act upon its meaning in a variety of ways, all intended by the relationship between the two by the artist. These devices are extraordinarily pre-visualized, and the meanings very defined. Nuance such as font style, font size, placement, etc extend the technical devices beyond the included semantic value of the words.

In this way the words are signs that deliver meanings of almost infinite possibility - but are controlled by the artist to mean certain things only, rather than being universal or wide ranging in their meaning. This is a difference that is subtle, yet more powerful than the caption, and has arrived as a device to take the caption beyond the control of the viewer, to remove the anecdote and confront the literal.

© John Frederick Anderson

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