Abstract:
Photographers in the “Post-Photographic era” (Wombell, 1991) now have the ability through mobile technology and digital software; to control, reconstruct and fabricate imagery, therefore manipulate narrative and control time? This argument of course is open to conjecture and interpretation, yet it would appear this interpretation has some form of substance? As we understand photography, memory and time are inextricability linked, although most viewers only associate time with a photograph when it becomes a past event, therefore, a memory.
Time is the true essence of photographic substance; yet, it is the missing or over looked element from the presented image at first glance, as addressed by Berger in classic essays “The true content of a photograph is invisible, for it derives from a play, not with form, but with time.”(Trachtenberg, 1980) It can be said the rational for Berger’s observation, is an ascertainment which its’ self has been eclipsed by time in this age of digital intervention or interference therefore I would suggest it must be re-considered and, or re-evaluated. This statement in turn directs my current research themes.
Fine art works such as “Narcissus Narcosis” (McMillan, 2002) consider similar themes; displacement, memory, time and narrative. A found photograph of a surfer on Bondi Beach re-enacted in fine detail on St. Andrews beach. Reconstructed digitally to provide a perfect match and displayed as large works opposite each other in a gallery space.
There are questions raised and generated in the production of such fine art works; “Circumstance”: destination of social development dictates accepted habits and skills; “Displacement”: the transfer of an emotion through a found image from its original focus to another person, or situation; “Memory”: the establishment of an associated memory from a photograph (the image was passed onto to the artist by a friend); “Time”: the re-enactment through performance to generate imagery relating to a different time and place?
Berger’s initial analysis of the ambiguity of the photograph concerns the single photograph. The wealth of it’s meanings is proportional to the length – breadth might have been clearer, since time is not involved – of its quotation from appearances, the number of cross-connections and correspondences its constituents generate, not only among themselves, but also intertextually. This purely synchronic coherence, which makes a virtue of the image’s discontinuity, has as its outcome a general but complex idea. In other words, single photographs, do not narrate; they instigate ideas. (Scott, 1999) This informs my Fine-Art practice, habit, repetition, the way people carry out their lives.
References:
Trachtenberg, A. ed. “Classic Essays On Photography” Connecticut. Leete’s Island Books, New Haven. 1980:
Lyons, Nathan ed. “Photographers on Photography”. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966: (TR185.L9)
Wombell, P. (1991) PhotoVideo: Photography in the Age of Computer, London: Rivers Oram Press
Scott, C., “The Spoken Image – Photography and Language”. London, Reakiton Books Limited, Guilford, London. 1999:
McMillan, D., “Narcissus Narcosis” – Crawford Arts Centre, St Andrews, 2002
