Tag: Critical Theory

Making sense of multiple photographs over time

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I just finished reading most of this book and found it quite thought provoking.  There seems a great muddle even amongst the “experts” in the epistemology and ontology of photographic practise that includes more than one photograph taken of the same subject.  Is it “before and after”, rephotography, repeat photography, a series, or “then-and-now” photography?  Depending on which source one might choose to use, it could be any one, all, or none of these labels.

Albers and Bear write in their opening chapter:

“Among the most significant orthodoxies in the recent historiography of photography is a shared conviction that a single, authoritative account of the medium is both impossible and undesirable.  A tenet of much of the most innovative scholarship since the 1970’s, this commitment to a plurality of histories is summed up in the scholar John Tagg’s haunting disavowal: “Photography as such has no identity…its history has no unity.  It is a flickering across a field of institutional spaces. It is this field we must study, not photography itself” 

And precisely because of photography’s lack of identity outside of specific discursive and institutional contexts, the art historian, the climatologist and the sociologist have no common idiom for discussing their photographic research.

As such, we focus on before-and-after photographs as a strategy so commonplace that virtually every disparate photographic discourse has enlisted it.” 

It seems to me the ubiquity of photography and its employment across virtually every social, scientific and artistic discipline renders photography in some ways a tool of the discipline in which it is being employed rather than an end unto itself.  I think this is the point Tagg was trying to make and the argument Bear and Albers put forth that there may be strategies employed across those disciplines that provide a basis for a common framework.  However, the distinctions they make between the related tropes that share in common the employment of more than one photograph are less than clear cut as evidenced by the essays that comprise the remainder of the book.

In the afterword, James Elkins writes:

“Because I am not sure how to distinguish rephotography from before-and-after photography, or before-and-after photography from individual photographs, I prefer to think of those odd experiences as extreme cases of the sorts of seeing that are provoked, unexpectedly and in general, by photographs of many kinds. If seeing photographs involves self-indulgent, myopic, or even anascopic seeing, and if it elicits subjunctive, reparative mediations on what was, what came between, and what came after, then before-and-after photography may be more an extreme kind of photography, a limit or test case, than a separable genre or mode or practise.  It may be a kind of photography that helps us to understand what some photography can be.”

Bear and Albers try to distinguish before-and-after photography as two photos punctuated by a singular unseen event that causes the change observed in the photographs, and which requires the viewer to imagine the nature of that event.  Rephotography, such as practised by Mark Klett and others, is likewise two photographs temporarily separated by an undefined period of time in which the viewer is still required to discern the changes and imagine what cause or causes effected the changes.  Both before-and-after photography begin from a single photograph and often with no intent to necessarily take a second photograph of the same place in a different time.  Occasionally, one might have foreknowledge of an impending event that would lend itself to a before-and-after trope.  The only way I can distinguish then-and-now photography from rephotography in either method or intent is rephotography necessitates taking the photos from the same place with as close as possible replication of the original perspectives.  Jem Southam’s work The Painter’s Pool is more of a then and now piece of work giving a feel of a place over a period of time without trying to recreate an original photograph.

Repeat photography, on the other hand, begins with intent to observe changes in a place over time by taking two or more photographs from the same place over some again undefined span of time.  It begins also with a belief that observable changes will occur by known or unknown single or multiple causal factors.  And herein comes the rub.

If I know that a hurricane is about to hit or a volcano about to erupt and I take photographs of the area to be affected by the event with the intent to return and photograph the aftermath, am I engaging in before-and-after or repeat photography?  Does it matter? If I stay and take photographs during the event it is no longer unseen and therefore does not fit the definition of before-and-after photography, but is it repeat photography with a relatively short temporal displacement or is it a series?  Again, does it matter?  If I take a series of photographs that captures the full sequence of an event, but then choose to only show the first and last in the series and leave the event unseen, is that before-and-after photography, or have I just made an editorial or curatorial choice?

Aren’t all of these distinctions somewhat arbitrary and vague?  Are they not in fact a continuum of sorts with boundaries that overlap as a function in part of the epistemological perspective of the project?  Perhaps what matters is that all the photographs provide some level of information imbued by the apparatus and the choices of the photographer that remain to be decoded by the viewer.  Furthermore, what seems common among virtually all of the examples described in the book, regardless of which trope one might assign, is none seem be approached by the photographers with an agenda, and rather are largely indexical in character.  The assignment or interpretation of significance seems to come in part from the editorial and curatorial choices made by the photographer, and from the viewer and whatever perspectives and biases they bring to viewing.

What relevance does this have to my project?  I am in large part observing a place over time.  I entered the project with the idea this was a classic repeat photography project in which I would observe and record both natural and anthropogenic changes on a landscape over a period of approximately two years.  However, I have foreknowledge that a major anthropogenic event will occur that will cause dramatic changes in the landscape.  Has this become a before-and-after project or because I will photograph the changes as the event occurs does it become a series?  Does the trope to which it is assigned depend on what and how I choose to show the results?  Can it be everything and none of these things depending on those choices?  And, does it matter?  Can it not just be what it is? Can I not just use photography as epistemological and ontological tool to understand my world?

I think I can.

Tagg, J. (1988). The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Bear, J., & Albers, K. P. (2017). Before-and-After Photography; Histories and Contexts (1st ed.). London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

Week 2 – Appropriation and Context

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This week’s forum was a discussion centered around the controversy over “The Rights of the Molotov Man” and the case known as Joywar.  In 2003 Joy Garnett used an image taken in 1979 by Susan Meiselas of a Sandanista rebel in Nicaragua as inspiration for a painting in a collection called Riot.  Garnett did not acknowledge the original author which was in my opinion an ethical breach.  While Meiselas claimed copyright infringement, Garnett in fact created a unique, derivative work based on Meiselas’ photo.  Meiselas later stated her principal objection was the loss of context of the original photo and the appropriation of its subject for a different purpose.

Sontag wrote “To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed.” (Sontag, 1977) She goes on further to say “The photograph a thin slice of space as well as time.” “Anything can be separated, can be made discontinuous, from anything else, all that is necessary is to frame the subject differently.” “Any photograph has multiple meanings: indeed, to see something in the form of a photograph is to encounter a potential object of fascination.” “Photographs, which cannot by themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation and fantasy.” (Sontag, 1977)

While Garnett should have acknowledged Meiselas’ photo as her inspiration, I find Meiselas’ argument about Garnett having stolen the context of the original photo to be specious and frivolous.  Someone standing next to Meiselas taking a photo of the same original event might have had a very different interpretation of the event if they had been on the other side politically and may have seen a riot instead of a rebellion.  As soon as a photo is published its author’s context is lost to that of the viewer.  Garnett simply chose to accept the invitation to deduce, speculate and fantasize about the image to create her new version.  I can see Meiselas’ point about the subject, Pablo Arauz, having his story misappropriated as he had a specific history, a piece of which that was captured in Meiselas’ photo, but that image was also appropriated by the Sandanista government and showed up on walls and matchbooks with intent to use it in a different context than when it was originally taken.

Context is a tricky business and as Sontag says photos do not stand alone.  We each view the world through the filters and biases resulting from our unique life experiences and those are applied to one degree or another to every image we see, to every word we read, and to every story we hear.  How then as photographers can we ever hope to control the context we saw when we made a photograph?  Sontag again wrote ” Photography implies that we know about the world if we accept it as the camera records it.  But this is the opposite of understanding, which starts from not accepting the world as it looks.  All possibility of understanding is rooted in the ability to say no.  Strictly speaking, one never understands anything from a photograph.”  (Sontag, 1977) Our cameras can provide evidence of something existing or having existed, but understanding requires more than can be captured in a single photograph.  Perhaps only through a collection of photographs or with words of explanation we can hope to convey to a viewer that which we originally intended when we chose to record an image.  And even then, there will remain those who are unconvinced.

Sontag, S. (1977). On Photography. Penguin Books.