Reflection Point

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Reflection point

• Where does that leave the photographer? As storyteller or history writer?

• Do you tend towards fact or fiction? 

• How could you blend your approach? 

• Where is your departure from wanting/needing to depict reality?

 

Make some notes on these questions in your learning log.

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The camera can be used to cover a wide specturm of content from story to historical,including a mix of the two.  At one end of the scale the camera can record the past with a degree of reliability – such as Eugene Atget’s portrayals of 19th century Paris. But even here there is selection rather than objectivity – history is said to be written by the victor, so can it ever be reliable?
 
The typologies of the Bechers probably get closest to authentic history due to their objectivity.
 
But the camera is a great storytelling device.  Eggleston and Shore – along with Frank and many others – curated their own images to recreate the story, the narrative, of how they felt everyday life was for people in Memphis or an other US town.  
 
The photographer always records a moment in time, a historical fact captured from that moment on.  Allowing ‘am here now’ to become ‘was there then’ (Barthes) indefinitely. Something that really did exist at a point in history.  But it can be influenced by storytelling before and after pressing the shutter, by arranging, posing, cropping, framing selectively to create a narrative.
 
Im not sure why photography comes against such scrutiny as to whether it provides a true historical account or not.  Historical novels and costume dramas never seem to suffer this and are widely accepted.
 
My personal work often tends towards fact rather than fiction.  But this raises the suggestion of being able to introduce more storytelling in order to expand the scope of areas I can explore.  Assignment 4 was an historical account of the places i frequented as a child, blended with an attempt to tell the story behind Thomas’ poem – and inspire the viewer to create their own story too.
 
The departure point for me is an ethical one of not wanting to deliberately mislead with the camera. Untruths are fine in photographic storytelling as long as people know thats what they are.  But nobody – not even Donald Trump it seems – wants to see ‘fake news’.
 
 

2 thoughts on “Reflection Point”

  1. Holly Woodward

    I share your dislike to deliberately misleading the viewer, Ian. However, I keep coming across work where the photographer/author/creator has appropriated someone else’s photographs are reimagined them. It is clearly a current trend. You might be interested in Peter Mann’s series on Amanda Knox, which looks at how images can be used to tell stories in different ways.

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    1. Ian Shaw (HippyHippoPhoto) Post author

      Hi Holly,

      Thanks for taking the time to comment.

      I wasn’t familiar with Peter Mann’s work on Amanda Knox until now and I see what you mean. Cleverly done, especially having to, quite literally, ‘see it another way’ by turning it around. I wonder whether it was hard for him to get the same number of images for both sides, or whether one type of image dominated the media?

      It’s also added something to an emerging idea I have for a future assignment. It would involve appropriating images about the American Dream juxtaposed with my own images of a now abandoned ‘American Adventure’ theme park near to where I live.

      Thanks – you’ve set the cogs in my brain whirring!

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