My research project considers the role photography and the photographic image; (digital or analogue) plays in everyday life and how we engage or interact with these ‘images’.
The idea of the single image commanding our attention has faded away. It seems as if we need to be distracted in order to concentrate. As if we are living in this new kind of space, the space of information. The experience of the discordance between an image and a moving image can leave the viewer with an overwhelming sense that, there is more they are than meets the eyes. The framed image itself is, as we know, a capsule containing memory, time & narrative, one that can be communicated, presented and re-presented across global platforms. The decisive moment as understood in photographic terms, where composition, narrative and time converge to the form an image of captured reality disguises the fact there are dark passages of narrative content hidden, undisclosed, yet they remain intrinsically linked to the final presented images.
We are surrounded today, everywhere, all the time by arrays of multiple, simultaneous, images. In the streets, airports and shopping centres, our computers and television sets, mobile devices, surveillance cameras. This new media documents transient movements, evidence, and imagery. This recorded data will be stored, viewed, the imagery interpreted, the visual content explored. The flow of images and specifically the space between the images, contain a wealth of information not directly presented by any given media viewing application. This state of perception seems to have been replaced by a new form of distraction, or a new form of attention. We now look and see many juxtaposed moving images, more than we can possibly synthesize or reduce to a single impression. These visual streaming moments dictate how we view and interface with narrative. The point of change where the narrative converges allowing an interpretation of the story to be presented as the intended, yet the interpretation of the final presented image can be completely misread by only interpreting the presented moment without the information of the hidden moment.
The themes of visual narrative have provided a powerful means of exploring the ‘self’ as an ongoing process of construction in time and place through the operation of memory. The 'still image' contains a set of representations of embodiment that is grounded in the recognition that we are made through our own and others histories. The narratives presented to the viewer first mean nothing more than what they seem. That is precisely what makes the art of photography so universal and far-reaching. The viewer first brings their own associations and memories into play and recognises this fact through their own need to interact with the imagery. This viewer interaction gives a practical perspective that is oriented to the accepted reality of the place. They reinterpret these inherited memories into a new context.
The idea of the photographic image as a ‘film still’ from a potential home-movie is an interesting concept, again changing the genre the ‘still image’ exists. Film stills are a particular aspect of our culture. They do not have much in common with films themselves. A film still is an incredibly short moment, frozen and extended to eternity. Within a film itself, the moment passes nearly unnoticed. It only has sense in its connection with the previous and later moments. We can draw similar conclusions regarding the position and our perception of individual memories within the continuum of time itself. Once an image is taken out of this continuum, once it is still and motionless, we perceive gestures, expressions on faces, and details of the setting. We also perceive their combination and meaningful interaction within the frozen moment. In spite of their name, however, film stills are not really still. They have lost their context, and with it, their explanation. Nevertheless, they refer emphatically to action, emotion and movement, sometimes even more than a photograph of a real event.
The photograph in contrast, as naturalistic as it pretends to be, never presents the world as it really is. It always uses a system of signs and conventions, which represent the world: a system of narratives aiming to be in a sense more real than the real world itself. Once these narratives have lost their natural context, they become transposed and they are filled-up with mystery. We can read tension in them. We know that something just happened and that something is about to happen but we do not know what it is. In short, a photograph is an arrangement of strongly evocative signs, which lack any definite reference. Therefore, I would suggest a photograph contains not only something present, something given but it also essentially includes the absent, the hidden, the untold. This raises questions surrounding ‘identity’ and/or ‘ownership’ of these moments and the power of visual propaganda to manipulate the voyeur.
The idea of the single image commanding our attention has faded away. It seems as if we need to be distracted in order to concentrate. As if we are living in this new kind of space, the space of information. The experience of the discordance between an image and a moving image can leave the viewer with an overwhelming sense that, there is more they are than meets the eyes. The framed image itself is, as we know, a capsule containing memory, time & narrative, one that can be communicated, presented and re-presented across global platforms. The decisive moment as understood in photographic terms, where composition, narrative and time converge to the form an image of captured reality disguises the fact there are dark passages of narrative content hidden, undisclosed, yet they remain intrinsically linked to the final presented images.
We are surrounded today, everywhere, all the time by arrays of multiple, simultaneous, images. In the streets, airports and shopping centres, our computers and television sets, mobile devices, surveillance cameras. This new media documents transient movements, evidence, and imagery. This recorded data will be stored, viewed, the imagery interpreted, the visual content explored. The flow of images and specifically the space between the images, contain a wealth of information not directly presented by any given media viewing application. This state of perception seems to have been replaced by a new form of distraction, or a new form of attention. We now look and see many juxtaposed moving images, more than we can possibly synthesize or reduce to a single impression. These visual streaming moments dictate how we view and interface with narrative. The point of change where the narrative converges allowing an interpretation of the story to be presented as the intended, yet the interpretation of the final presented image can be completely misread by only interpreting the presented moment without the information of the hidden moment.
The themes of visual narrative have provided a powerful means of exploring the ‘self’ as an ongoing process of construction in time and place through the operation of memory. The 'still image' contains a set of representations of embodiment that is grounded in the recognition that we are made through our own and others histories. The narratives presented to the viewer first mean nothing more than what they seem. That is precisely what makes the art of photography so universal and far-reaching. The viewer first brings their own associations and memories into play and recognises this fact through their own need to interact with the imagery. This viewer interaction gives a practical perspective that is oriented to the accepted reality of the place. They reinterpret these inherited memories into a new context.
The idea of the photographic image as a ‘film still’ from a potential home-movie is an interesting concept, again changing the genre the ‘still image’ exists. Film stills are a particular aspect of our culture. They do not have much in common with films themselves. A film still is an incredibly short moment, frozen and extended to eternity. Within a film itself, the moment passes nearly unnoticed. It only has sense in its connection with the previous and later moments. We can draw similar conclusions regarding the position and our perception of individual memories within the continuum of time itself. Once an image is taken out of this continuum, once it is still and motionless, we perceive gestures, expressions on faces, and details of the setting. We also perceive their combination and meaningful interaction within the frozen moment. In spite of their name, however, film stills are not really still. They have lost their context, and with it, their explanation. Nevertheless, they refer emphatically to action, emotion and movement, sometimes even more than a photograph of a real event.
The photograph in contrast, as naturalistic as it pretends to be, never presents the world as it really is. It always uses a system of signs and conventions, which represent the world: a system of narratives aiming to be in a sense more real than the real world itself. Once these narratives have lost their natural context, they become transposed and they are filled-up with mystery. We can read tension in them. We know that something just happened and that something is about to happen but we do not know what it is. In short, a photograph is an arrangement of strongly evocative signs, which lack any definite reference. Therefore, I would suggest a photograph contains not only something present, something given but it also essentially includes the absent, the hidden, the untold. This raises questions surrounding ‘identity’ and/or ‘ownership’ of these moments and the power of visual propaganda to manipulate the voyeur.
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