Introduction

We are introduced to a number of artists who have elected to take the ‘bring your imagination’ to their work. Where the previous artists had represented their subject’s identities in the context of daily life, their real or imaginary environment, the next idea being investigated is when the subject is absent. In the first Research Task [1] we consider how removing the subject affects the photographer’s role as documenter or storyteller, as well as thinking about our own thoughts on how it might affect our work going forward. In this post, I will be looking at the artists themselves.

William Eggleston (1939 -)

William Eggleston is a photographer that divides opinion. His work is considered pioneering and overrated, seemingly in equal measure, but one thing that anyone would struggle to do is ignore it. The notes refer to the duality of his shooting a particular place that we may or may not be familiar with and representing it in a way that the viewer has to decide how real or not that may be. Perhaps his most talked about photograph (below) is a great example of this.

Here, the child’s tricycle looks like it has seen better days and is apparently abandoned at the side of an ordinary-looking street. In an interview with the Whitney Museum [3], Eggleston refers to his walking around an ordinary neighbourhood in Memphis without any particular purpose. While sitting on the curb, he noticed the tricycle close by. His photograph puts the viewer at the same level as his subject and it dominates the frame. We cannot help but look at the tricycle as if from a child’s perspective. Why was it left there? What happened to the owner? More importantly, the viewer is encouraged to look beyond the dominant subject at the background. The street looks fairly featureless, but the questions about the neighbourhood are instant. What is the place like? Do people litter the streets with stray children’s toys? We know nothing really about the street or its inhabitants, but Eggleston creates his own version of it through an image of an everyday object in the context of its environment. It’s condition and the fact that it is left out on a pavement lets us draw our own conclusions about it, based on our experiences, prejudices and cultural view of the South US. Eggleston claims that he just likes taking pictures of what he sees, but in looking at his work, there is a great deal more to it than that. In his book Election Eve (1977), he shoots a series of pictures that refer to traces of the subject alluded to by the title, but in reality it’s more about small town American life away from the hysteria of the election. In most cases the images show only traces of the people in the town, with those where we can see them are composed in a way that doesn’t distract the viewer to the other elements in the frame.

In this image, Eggleston creates a sense of rural America through his use of colour and tone. The use of colour is something that Eggleston is famous for as one of the pioneers of its use when high art was still firmly in black and white. Here, the rich brown tones of the porch and the car are made vivid by the film and the light in the scene. The mood that Eggleston creates is a clash with the urban aesthetic that we would naturally associate with Washington, where the presidential election was taking place. The image, and indeed the series, suggest a ‘meanwhile, away from the noise’ response to the events. Eggleston includes traces of people in this frame (the car, the deckchairs on the porch etc) and also someone on the very edge of the frame. By leaving the woman half in the composition, Eggleston gives the sense that the people of this rural area are somehow unimportant.

“On the eve of the election, when nothing had yet been decided, when everything–whatever that everything was–hung in the balance, Eggleston made an elegy…a statement of perfect calm. To say, however, that these photographs are romantic, sorrowful and quiet is not to imply that they are easy or in any sense comforting. They are richer and more sensual in some ways than Eggleston’s other work, but they are not less penetrating or unsettling. In them Eggleston seems bent, as always, on recording those unremarked units of spatial perception by which the everyday world is unconsciously ordered”

Lloyd Fonvielle writing in the introduction to Election Eve (1976)[4]

Richard Wentworth (1947 -)

In his book Making Do and Getting By (1984), Wentworth presents everyday banality in the same way as Eggleston, only here we have traces of people doing the best they can with whatever is available to them. In a humerous way, Wentworth’s series looks like a collection of badly executed DIY repairs, ranging from the hoarding around the base of the lamp post shown in the notes to the use of the hammer to lift a door off the ground. There are a number of layers of narrative in these works, staring with the obvious poking fun at the ineptitude of what cases of ‘making do’ with botched repairs. However, we also see situations created by people who have little choice as in the image below.

In this picture we see a ladder precariously balanced on blocks of chipboard. Aside from the perceived stupidity of the arrangement which looks dangerous, we also wonder how the operator concluded that this was the right way to go. Did they have no other alternative or is this the reality of working in the city vs. the countryside? We cannot see the operator and don’t know if they used this setup or not. The picture asks questions of us as a resourceful species, the societal aspects of what is acceptable risk and of the person taking that risk, despite there being nobody in the photograph. In addition to these interpretations, the image is a 2D representation of what could be a modern art sculpture. In the banality of the composition, Wentworth creates a simple but challenging narrative that combines the serious with the satirical. Like Eggleston, Wentworth takes his time to observer, citing the artist’s responsibility is to be vigilant [6]. In looking for the things that we might not notice in the chaos of daily life, both artists create a commentary on an aspect of society that we are all familiar with, even if we are not within it.

Elliott Wilcox (1987 -)

In Wilcox’s work we have much more abstract traces of human life. Both series are shot with tight fields of view which result in shots that ask questions about the subject itself. In Courts his shots of a Real Tennis court, a game popularised in the Tudor era, offer the viewer a perspective on a space that has a vintage feel to it.

The inclusion of crowns painted on the walls suggest that something important or upper class takes place on the court, which in turn sets the space into a societal context. When we look more closely, we see the marks left by the tennis balls striking the once-pristine paintwork. In other images, there are cracks in the surface which future emphasis the sense of intensity in the sport. This points to the passage of time and the vast number of people who have competed in this space. We get sense of the activity and the people taking part without them needed to be there. The notes refer to his other work ‘Walls’, which takes the same approach with a variety of climbing walls. the tight compositions accentuate the minute traces of people left on the walls, but the subjects themselves are often obscure to the point of becoming abstract.

Sarah Pickering (1972 – )

We’ve encountered Sarah Pieckering’s Public Order series in a previous unit[8]. Her bleak architectural landscape shots of a fake town that is used to train police officers in public disorder management are strange but familiar. At the time, I associated the work with the familiar aesthetic of the area where my wife grew up in industrial West Yorkshire. I was considering Pickering’s use of the space, texture and implied dereliction of an urban area, but when I think about it now, I re-evaluate what I brought to that original interpretation. If I were to walk around the area that I am familiar with, I would see the features of the environment in the context of the people who live there, which would in fact tell a story about everyday life. That everyday life would include not only the physical decline, but also the changes in cultural influence. I would be able to see positives and negatives within that area’s identity. When I look at Pickering’s work, however, there is no reference to actual people. We are presented with a visual where we create our own population that might inhabit it. That creation is based in ‘fact’, i.e. what we bring to the reading of the image, but also has a fantastical element to it.

With her other work Incident (2008), I am instantly reminded of the work of mid-20th Century crime photographer Weegee, who for many years turned to crime scenes with his large format press camera to shoot the immediate aftermath of a heinous crime. In those images, the scene was often ‘managed’ in some way by the police presence, which leaves the viewer wondering with many questions about what had just occurred.

In this image, we see a police officer and another man looking at a covered body on what looks like a pier. The actual story is of a stampede that killed the woman lying on the ground and we see on further inspection that the wasn’t the only one. However, without the knowledge of the story, we are left with questions about the victims, whether they were linked to each other in any way as well as the obvious ‘what happened here?’ Weegee included enough to suggest documentary, but left enough room for the viewer to make up their own story that fitted the elements in the frame.

With this image we see a collection of burnt out white goods. At first the damage points to our inner fear of a fire breaking out in our homes, but on closer inspection the items don’t appear to be severely damaged. The soot that covers their surface came from another part of the building, which leaves us wondering about what happened. The domestic nature of the image suggests, but doesn’t specifically include people as with the other artists here. We recognise the machines as part of our daily lives which are now in some way unavailable to the owner. As well as the big questions of whether the people managed to survive the fire, we are also wondering how their lives will need to be rebuilt, starting with these appliances that they/we depend on daily. Of course, the series isn’t about any real people, instead being a training exercise for firefighters. By including familiar objects and linking them with our primeval fear of fire, Pickering creates an anxiety where we hope that our imaginary occupants made it out alive.

Conclusion

The artists in this project have succeeded in making work about people, whether real or imaginary, without any being present in the images. By using subjects that point to some event or activity that people might participate in, the viewer is given a sense of who the absent person might be. However, in leaving the space to create our own impressions the artists make the work more about how we imagine life to be rather than limiting the reading to our own experiences. As Szarkowski pointed out in his introduction to Eggleston’s work, the idea of the picture being more than just an assumed reflection on real life means that there is a great deal more to connect with when we view it. When this happens, the apparent banality of the subject is in fact the art, rather than a statement of fact. For me, the suggestion of identity though the use of traces gives a freedom to the work for which there is no right or wrong interpretation.

References

[1] Fletcher R, 2021, “5) Exercise 1: Personal Reflection”, OCA Blog Post, https://richardfletcherphotography.photo.blog/2021/11/16/5-research-task-personal-reflection/

[2] Eggleston W, 1969, “Memphis”, Image Resource, MoMA, https://www.moma.org/collection/works/51630

[3] Sothebys, 2021, “Election Eve: 50 Masterworks to celebrate 50 Years of Sotheby’s Photographs”, Image Resource, https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2021/50-masterworks-to-celebrate-50-years-of-sothebys-photographs-2/election-eve

[4] Editorial, 2010, “William Eggleston: Preface from Election Eve (1977)”, American Suburb X, https://americansuburbx.com/2010/09/william-eggleston-preface-from-election.html

[5] Unknown, 2019, “Richard Wentworth”, Exhibition Catalogue, XIBIT Magazine, https://www.xibtmagazine.com/en/events/richard-wentworth/

[6] Phaidon, 2015, “Akademie X:Richard Wentworth”, Youtube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jsivEAXRwg

[7]Unknown, 2021, “Elliott Wilcox – Crane Kalman Brighton, Gallery Brochure, https://cranekalmanbrighton.com/artists/elliott-wilcox-biography/

[8] Fletcher R, 2020, “Exercise 3: Public Order”. OCA Blog Post, https://richardfletcherphotography.photo.blog/2020/05/12/exercise-3-public-order/

[9] Unknown, 2012, “Shot Dead: Weegee’s murder photographs go on show – in pictures”, The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2012/jan/19/weegee-murder-photographs-pictures-new-york

[10] Pickering S, 2008, “Incident”, Image Resource, Artist Website, https://www.sarahpickering.co.uk/works/incident/

Introduction

We are introduced to a number of artists who have used conversations or discussions to describe or invoke memories. As we learned in Part 3, memories can take the form of our own past experiences, those passed down through generations or even those that are created by a major cultural event such as The Holocaust or the assassination of JFK. The phrase “Do you remember where you were when…?” evokes memories that may not be our own but are our acknowledgement of what happened and the cultural circumstances that gave rise to it.

David Favrod (1982 -)

In his work Hikari (2014), Favrod addresses a single conversation that he had with his grandparents about the events and aftermath of World War 2 in Japan, which included the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945. Favrod remembered this conversation that was never revisited or discussed subsequently and as he described in an article for LensCulture[1], he had borrowed their memories and used them for his own testimony. In doing so, he used an increasingly fading direct memory (as survivors of the war are dying out) to highlight his own coming to terms being half-Japanese and not being able to gain duel citizenship. The series combines different styles, ranging from straight documentary, through fictional and conceptual images. In each case, Favrod leaves a large amount of ‘space’ for the viewer to bring their own experiences to the interpretation. Some images are stark but conventional compositions, while others contain graphical annotations or text. Most notable is the shot below:

What is interesting about this photograph is not so much the desolate aesthetic, with the bright sun and rising smoke from what we presume is a fire. Instead the Japanese text that has been added is the representation of Baoummm, the sound that conjours the explosion of a bomb. As we look at the image, anyone who does not understand the inscription has the title to go by, which when spoken out loud phonetically describes an explosion. The rest of the image immediately suggests total destruction, which two cities in Japan suffered when the atomic bomb was used. The image now suggests that perhaps this landscape looked different before a catastrophic event with the remnants being the bright light of a fire and smoke on the horizon. The added aural information connects directly with the memory of Favrod’s grandparents and is constructed in a way that the noise could still be felt in the present. When we look at this image in the series, the duality of the narratives becomes more apparent. Knowing that Favrod tried and failed to become part of the culture that half his family were from, this shot takes on an empty, almost pointless feeling to it. The news would have been devastating, so the combination of the wasteland and the shock of the sound connect with his experience as well as that of his grandparents.

Another image that stood out for me was the one below:

Here we have a shadow puppet being cast onto a concrete wall and a title that suggests that it’s the wall of a bunker. In the interview with Sharon Boothroyd [2], Favrod describes the fact that in his home country of Switzerland there is a law stating that houses must have some form of underground shelter in case of nuclear accident. Knowing just this one piece of information through its title, we can read the image as being about freedom because of the symbolism of the bird ‘sculpture’ being made with the hands. When we add the context of Favrod’s duel citizenship issue, the image could take a more political meaning where the artist is being actively excluded from part of his ancestral heritage. However, we also have the anecdotal information about how the atomic bomb blasts scorched patterns of living things into walls and other structures owing to the intense heat. Now the image has a sense of duality about it that is influenced by the spoken word and historical memory more than the title. We’ve all been to a gallery or museum where an exhibition has a brief introduction to the artist or an audio clip where they introduce the series. These quotations or spoken words set the scene for the series before the viewer looks at the pictures and serves to provide a small amount of detail, the expectation being that viewer bring their own interpretation to the work. In the case of Hikari, the viewer doesn’t need to be experienced in Japanese culture in order to read the images. They could simply bring their idea of Japan in a similar way to the concept of ‘Italianicity’ in Barthes’s paper[3].

Sharon Boothroyd (1982 -)

In her series ‘If you get married again, will you still love me?’, Boothroyd attempts to show us the unspoken emotions experienced by children when their father is absent from their lives. Instead of straight documentary of a particular situation or reaction to it, Boothroyd takes a more constructed approach. In an interview with LensCulture, Boothroyd described how her discussions with separated fathers and their children, while revealing, didn’t uncover the truth about the pain caused by the situation. She decided to take the anecdotes from her interviews and create a series of tableaux to reflect her interpretation of the feelings the children were experiencing. Boothroyd tried to get inside the child’s experience and represent that in her photographs. The series doesn’t contain any additional context beyond the main title and it is up to the viewer to interpret the images in conjunction with it. Although many people don’t experience the loss of a father figure through divorce or separation, what is powerful in this series is that everyone has dark moments where they are isolated or anxious. For example:

In this picture, a girl and (we presume) her father are sitting in a cafe sharing a portion of chips. The immediate thing that we notice is the physical distance between the two and their total lack of engagement. Without knowing that the series is about absenteeism, it could be interpreted as a teenage daughter behaving like a teenager. However on close inspection there is a real difference visible in the expressions of the two; the girls anger and the father’s sadness. Now the image can be read as a drifting apart that a portion of chips isn’t sufficient to bridge. We can interpret the offering of food as a way of breaking the ice or diffusing tension, but also as a poor way of making an unhappy person feel better. Perhaps the gesture itself is what has made the girl angry. In my interpretation, I am conscious of my own experiences as a teenager which don’t necessarily reflect that of other viewers; this is the point of the series. The viewer brings their own empathy, intolerance or feelings of love, anger and sadness to their interpretation of the image with only the title of the series to go on. The learning point here is that we don’t have to include text to create an open narrative, but some small gesture of context-setting helps guide the viewer in their understanding of the work.

Kaylynn Deveney and Duane Michals

The next two artists we are introduced to have both made use of annotation in their works. Kaylynn Deveney’s series “The Day-to-Day Life of Albert Hastings” is just that. The artist got to know her subject, an elderly gentleman that lived in the same area of South Wales, and photographed him going about his day. While we have encountered a number of artists who have done this sort of thing, what is interesting about Deveney series is that it is annotated by the subject. In her introduction to the series, Deveney describes how she wanted to explore Albert’s experience of being photographed and how it differed from how she perceived him as a subject. When we look at the annotations that he added, we get an insight into his personality that supports the image. Some are banal, which is how Deveney describes the particular event being photographed, for example:

In this image, we have an interesting composition, with the subject framed by his pyjamas, yet he simply states the fact that they are drying. I find the brevity of the annotation interesting because when we look more closely, Albert is doing something else in his laundry. Although not entirely clear, he looks as though he is ironing some other clothes. This raises questions about how he saw this domestic activity and why when he looked at the print, his attention was focussed on his pyjamas. Elsewhere in the series, we learn that his pyjamas are a source of physical comfort to him, so perhaps this image can be read as him acknowledging his priorities rather than simply doing his chores.

Other annotations in the series are more humorous, with for example Albert joking about opening his veil-like curtains as opposed to talking to a ghost. Others go further into his philosophical side with notable example being a close-up portrait with the caption:

“Could this be a presumptive picture of my futuristic soul regarding a past world and friends?”

With the variation of commentary provided by Albert, we get an insight not only into his day-to-day life of chores and pleasures, but also his outlook and mood over time. Deveney states that she photographed him living in a number of flats over a couple of years and as she got to know him better, he started to open up about the past life he refers to above, providing the artist with family photographs, drawings and poems that he had written. All of these appear in the series, which further emphasises the sense of Albert’s identity without merely telling his story.

We discussed Michals’ use of text on a photograph in Context and Narrative[6], with the image This Photograph is my Proof (1967). That image showed a couple sitting on a bed in an affectionate embrace. The accompanying text stated that the moment captured was proof that the relationship was good at one point, which created a different narrative within the image. Now, instead of the joy read in the iconic message in the image, we have a reflection on a memory that is sad and regretful. The narrator is challenging the notion that their relationship had always been bad by pointing out something that visually proves it to not be the case. As well as invoking a sense of ‘I told you so”, the image also highlights our inherent belief that what we see in a photograph is the truth. Whatever the real truth of the situation being described, the image is presented as evidence even though the poses, expressions etc could be manufactured or exaggerated in some way. Michals uses text to help tell stories that are wrapped up in the journey of life towards death and his annotated series’ deal with related topics like reincarnation (The Bewitched Bee, 1986)[7]. In this example, Michals’ use of relay text invokes the emotions of feeling lost, found and then lost again, with the subject being transformed by a bee sting into a majestic antlered creature. When I first saw this series, I wasn’t immediately taken by the aesthetic quality of the photographs but by the way each picture built an emotional response throughout the sequence. Michals’ himself stated:

“I’m not interested in what something looks like, I want to know what it feels like.”

Duane Michals [7]

In my reading of The Bewitched Bee, I am bringing some of my own past experiences of establishing identity which in turn invoke memory and provoke emotion.

The Spoken Word

While each of these artists have exploited the written word in creating their narratives, the one that differs slightly from the others is Sharon Boothroyd. In her series, she used conversations with separated fathers to gather some questions that were asked by their children, which used as the background for her series. Only the title explicitly quoted the question, but the anecdotal spoken work comes through strongly in the images that make up the series. The common theme through the works of all of the artists is the power of the subject’s perspective, whether it is the interpretation of the memory of a conversation as with Favrod, or the actual writings from the subject as with Deveney. When an artist includes the subject to provide a commentary to the work, the resulting narratives can take on a wider meaning, as with the first example in the notes, Sophie Calle’s Take Care of Yourself. We first encountered this work in Context and Narrative where we explored Calle’s approach of seeking the views of multiple viewers to help establish the narrative. When we consider it in terms of the spoken word, however we can read more than just the opinions of individuals. Calle had asked a large number of women to read the break-up email from her partner and respond in some way. What she got back was a broad interpretation of the email’s contents, emotional reactions to the sentiments of its writer and suggestions about how to deal with it. The work’s title, which highlights a patronising platitude who’s use is somehow meant to placate the reader, suggested to me that the narrative was about anger and resentment at Calle’s treatment. However, now I read something else about our culture. The response are essentially putting the viewer in Calle’s place, asking how they would react if they’d received the email. The breadth of female solidarity comes through but the for me the more impactful element is how that is expressed. Modern society is much more expressive with the advances in communication technology, so people are almost less restrained when it comes to putting their view across. This is my experience, which when I bring to the viewing means that Calle’s work now takes on a sense of “is it just me or…?”, as if she is seeking some form of approval of her own reaction to the email.

With Anna Fox’s My Mother’s Cupboards and My Father’s Words, the artist combines direct quotations from her father with the ordered, banal and almost claustrophobic spaces that her mother kept. Fox’s father was gravely ill and would verbally lash out at her mother and her regularly. The brutality of the rants and in many cases, threats of violence contrast with the domestic bleakness of the images.

What is most powerful here is the insight it gives us into a fragile relationship without either participant being seen. Where the other artists covered in this Project have used reflections on conversations and the real viewpoints of their subjects in their work, Fox creates a window for the viewer to see ‘what was really said’ by one spouse to another. Through that window we get a sense of the tension in the household, with domestic life continuing as normal as possible. We are left with questions about many aspects of the work that don’t appear as iconic context in the photographs. Was her father’s aggression wholly caused by his illness or was it endemic in their relationship? What was her mother’s response to the abuse? What kind of person was she and how did that affect Fox’s outlook on life?

Conclusion

In reflecting on the use of text either as part of or in conjunction with images, I can’t help but focus on the relative impact of words in invoking memory. Whether invoking educational memory, such as Lurpak’s clever use of strength and masculinity to create a sense of Viking or the Orwellian aesthetic of Kruger’s social commentary on gender equality, artists significanly increase the emotional connection with their work through words. This increases further when the text is derived from a living memory or sense of identity or empathy that the artist is still experiencing. Boothroyd’s approach of listening to the testimony of absent fathers and children allowed her to put herself in place of them both when creating her very precise tableaux. Deveney’s deeply moving documentary of the life of an elderly man is made more powerful when his perspectives on the images are annotated on them. In this case, the directly quoted words become part of the image itself, offering some insight into how Albert felt and what he thought about this project. In Michals’ work, his quest to understand how something feels overrides any sense of direct quotation, its loose narrative being relatable in many different ways without necessarily understanding the artist’s intent. Calle takes the broader reactions to her experience and presents them to the viewer as if to ask if they can empathise and even agree. With Fox’s series, the fantastical threats of violence collide with the banality of the images, with each entirely dependent on the other to have impact. What I’ve learned from this project is that the numerous ways we can pick up fragments or whole texts leaves plenty of room for us to bring our own experiences, but all the time there is a sense of legitimacy because someone else has spoken or written them. The originator is sometimes the artist and sometimes not. Either way, the inclusion of such text or speech connects us more with those people in a way that documentary captioning cannot.

References

[1] Unknown author and date, “Hikari – Photographs and Text by David Favrod”, Article, LensCulture magazine, https://www.lensculture.com/articles/david-favrod-hikari

[2] Boothroyd S, 2014, “David Favrod”, Blog Interview, Photoparley, https://photoparley.wordpress.com/2014/09/23/david-favrod/

[3] Fletcher R, 2021, “Research Task: The Rhetoric of the Image”, OCA Blog Post, https://richardfletcherphotography.photo.blog/2021/11/05/research-task-rhetoric-of-the-image/

[4] Smithson A, 2012,”Sharon Boothroyd: If you get married again, will you still love me?”, Lenscratch Magazine, https://www.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/what-was-on/joan-fontcuberta-stranger-fiction

[5] Deveney K, 2001, “The Day to Day Life of Albert Hastings”, Artist Website, https://kaylynndeveney.com/the-day-to-day-life-of-albert-hastings

[6] Fletcher R, 2020, “2) Exercise 2: Newspaper Analysis”, OCA Blog Post, https://richardfletcherphotography.photo.blog/2020/06/12/2-exercise-2-newspaper-analysis/

[7] Bunyan M, 2015,”Storyteller: The Photographs of Duane Michals, Art Blart Magazine, https://artblart.com/tag/storyteller-the-photographs-of-duane-michals/

[8] Unknown author and date, “My Mother’s Cupboards and My Father’s Words”, Hyman Collection, British Photography.org, http://www.britishphotography.org/artists/15795/10316/anna-fox-my-mothers-cupboards-and-my-fathers-words-06?r=artists/15795/e/1916/anna-fox-anna-fox-my-mothers-cupboards-and-my-fathers-words-1999

Introduction

So far in Part 4, we’ve looked at the use of text or the spoken word to tell factual stories about a subject that we can relate to as real. From the examples of remembering a brief conversation (Favrod), the experiences of domestic abuse (Fox) to the simple yet powerful emotions of a child wanting to establish their relationship with an absent father (Boothroyd), they are all narratives about real life. The photographs aren’t in themselves about real life, though. In Boothroyd’s series [1], the images are carefully constructed tableaux that, as we know, need not be about real events. Instead they need to provide the viewer with enough signifieds that help build a narrative that broadly aligns with the artist’s intent. Our imaginations and specific experiences fill in the blanks in the narratives, for example my own experiences of feeling isolated as a teenager and subsequent mental illness related to the death of my mother, made Boothroyd’s series resonate with me in a way that every tableau made sense to me. This is what we have learned about reading photographs; there is an artist intent that revolves around a personal interest, experience or story that they want to tell. What we realise though is that the story doesn’t have to be factual in nature – the photographer has an imagination as well. So what happens when the imagery and text are freed from being firmly anchored in reality?

Michael Colvin – Rubber Flapper (2015)

This narrative series by Colvin is the subject of an interview that he gave with OCA, where he describes how his ideas for narratives came about. The basis for the series comes from the refusal of Staten Island Officials in New York to acknowledge the sexuality and relationship of 19th Century photographer Alice Austen. Austen and Gertrude Tate lived together as ‘companions’ and partners in the tea room they ran in Clear Comfort, NY. The extent of their relationship was both hidden from and denied by the women’s families to the extent that their final wishes to be buried together was ignored. Colvin related to the denial of gay sexuality and used the further historical control of Austen’s estate, principally the refusal to allow research of her archive of work at the time of his assignment, to create a fictional documentary of a secretive woman who lived in a self-cleaning house. The narrative that the series creates a sense of observing the bizarre, sympathetically trying to uncover the ‘truth’ of the character’s life and a sense of unwanted intrusion when he makes progress with this quest. We have a combination of words and text that make the character come to life as Colvin places himself in the role of investigator. Colvin’s use of text is interesting here because he combines a related event with complete works of fiction. In the example below, we see what looks like a real newspaper cutting about an mysterious woman and her new husband living in a self-cleaning house. It’s based on Colvin’s discovery that someone did build such a house and lived in it for many years, but the cutting is a prop created by the artist. He includes it as a sort of scrapbook image with a more readable transcript telling some of the Flapper’s story to the viewer.

Another textual element comes in the form of a letter from the legal representative in charge of the character’s estate who withdraw’s consent to use material from her archive when the artist uncovers her sexuality. This connection to Austen, while fictional, tells a story about cultural attitudes towards lesbianism both historically and in the contemporary sense. Colvin’s series is shot to look archival and is so convincing that it’s difficult to tell real from imaginary. I find Colvin’s attention to detail astonishing, from the carefully constructed props to the post-processing and collage work that create the scrapbook aesthetic. What the combination of constructed text achieves here is the storytelling pointers that provide the context needed to interpret the series. By making the text the actual image as in the above, the series is completely plausible. Without the inclusion of these self-contained iconic messages, the series remains fantastical but lacks the glue to holds the narrative together.

Christian Patterson – Redheaded Peckerwood (2011)

With Patterson’s series, the key difference is that while Colvin was creating a fictional story that had some element of believable ‘truth’ to it, Redheaded Peckerwood is based on an actual event. The killing spree of two Wyoming teenagers in the 1950s was a notorious enough story to the extent that it had been used as the inspiration for a film called Badlands. In an interview with Jörg Colberg[3], Patterson said that he was surprised at how the real story of the murders was stranger and more tragic than the fictional portrayal in the film and he went on to think about how to tell that story through his own imagery. Patterson followed the route taken by the killers, investigated a variety of aspects of the case and used a mixture of real imagery (forensic photographs, news reports) alongside his own recreated tableaux photographs. He mixed composition style, colour vs. black and white and in some cased fabricated an image in terms of its place in the timeline, all to tell the story from his perspective and point of interest.

“I often say that Redheaded Peckerwood is a body of photographs, documents and objects that utilizes a true crime story as a spine. The story continually served as a source of inspiration and ideas, but what really excited me about my work was the expansion of my own artistic practice”

Christian Patterson[3]

Perhaps the most unusual images in the series are the constructed pseudo-quotations like the one below:

The phrase “you don’t know shit from Shinola” has been part of the US lexicon for many years, even after Shinola, a well known brand of shoe polish, went out of production. It’s a term that means ‘ignorant’ through the suggestion that someone cannot tell one thing from another. The image itself shows the product spilling over a surface and revealing a texture which isn’t obvious. Perhaps its addition in the series suggests that all is not what it seems in the story of the two killers. Aesthetically the image could be straight out of a 1950s advertisement, which matches most of the photography in the rest of the series. This is what the series has in common with Colvin’s. The fantastical meanings are there to be seen, but the photography and use of fiction makes us question the almost-default idea of the medium being truthful of documentary. We don’t know what is real and what is imaginary in either case, but both tell a couples story.

“Ultimately, I wanted the work to act as a more complex, enigmatic visual crime dossier — a mixed collection of cryptic clues, random facts and fictions that the viewer had to deal with on their own, to some extent.”

Christian Patterson[3]

Joan Fontcuberta – ​Stranger Than Fiction​ 

The last of the artist mentioned in this Project is Joan Fontcuberta who takes the confusion with what is real and what isn’t to a whole other level. His series Stranger Than Fiction shows us fantastical ‘evidence’ of creatures, plants, people etc. that are so outragrous as to lead us to question what we know. When I first saw them I was reminded of the spoof journalism of the tabloids with their photographic proof of things like ‘a double decker bus found on the moon’ that were so ridiculous that they couldn’t possibly be real. Such lunacy doesn’t bring our faith in journalism or photography evidence of the truth into question, but there is something about Fontcuberta’s work that makes us wonder. Take the example below from the sub-narrative set called Sirens.

This photograph depicts the remains of a mythical creature call the Hydropitecus which clearly has the tail of a fish and humanoid skeleton, making it a siren or mermaid. The creature is fossilised in rock, lending credence to its age. We are told by the story that accompanies the series that the creature was discovered by a priest called Jean Fontana and is detailed in published scientific journals. The whole thing looks convincing enough that we need to apply our knowledge of history, folklore and mythology to review the narrative, after which we realise that it is totally fake. Then we notice the similarities between the artist’s name and the priest in the story, which sets our minds at ease – we were not fooled after all. The rest of Fontcuberta’s work in the series messes with what we believe to be true, with millipedes sporting full limbs, monkeys with turtle heads etc an in each case some legitimacy added by text or supporting documents.

“The idea that photography lies is based on a complete misunderstanding of what photography actually is or does.  Photographs, by themselves, don’t do anything. They’re just photographs. But they can be made to tell a story or tall tale or outright lie when they are being placed in context, when they’re used to tell a story that might or might not be true”.

Jörg Colberg discussing the work of Joan Fontcuberta[6]

Open vs. Closed Narratives

The final part of this section of the course notes deals with the difference between open and closed narratives. Open narratives are those where the viewer or reader is invited to bring their own interpretation to the work through the text that is included in some way. The artists we have covered in Part 4 use primarily open narratives because it gives the work more depth; the text acts as relay in guiding them to a conclusion about what the work means. When we incorporate text that informs more than invites, i.e. anchors the story, we leave little room for the viewer to create their own. Examples of literature and cinema could be considered more closed than open. The notes highlight the importance of the difference between closed narratives and ‘closure’, the latter being inviting the viewer to draw their own conclusion from the many narrative paths to achieve some understanding. Closure does not mean that the narrative lacks the space for the viewer to bring their own ideas, more that it helps with the decision being made. The notes conclude with ways of thinking about narratives and how to use both fiction and non-fiction to enhance the visuals in our artwork.

Conclusion

The main learning from this project is that we as artists have the flexibility to completely fabricate our own truths with our work. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it does. The truth of photography as a medium is that people still see it as a factual representation that must real in some way. The artists here have used photography as a tool to challenge both our understanding of the medium but also so tell a story a particular way. Colvin explores the politics of sexuality and the denial or shame that society still struggles with when being honest about how they feel. We find ourselves wanting to know more about his character while all the time being taken in by the apparent authenticity of the documentary. Patterson combines the real story with his own research and perspective on the horrific crimes. The series mixes aesthetics but still manages to leave us confused about what is historical fact and the views of a contemporary artist. Finally, Fontcuberto messes with our belief system by making us look closely at the often jarringly obvious fabrications, as if asking “can you be sure, though?”. One consistency though is the impact of words in the form of text, supporting notes or as visuals themselves. Without the words, each artwork remains interesting but will little cohesion. Whether or not we choose to be inspired to be real or imaginary is really down to personal choice.

References

[1] Fletcher R, 2021, 4) Project 2: Memories and Speech”, OCA Blog Post, https://richardfletcherphotography.photo.blog/2021/11/05/4-project-2-memories-and-speech/

[2] Colvin M, 2015, “Assignment 2 – Rubber Flapper”, A Partial Moment Blog, http://apartialmoment.blogspot.com/2015/01/assignment-2-rubber-flapper.html

[3] Colberg J, 2012, “A Conversation with Christan Patterson”, Conscientious Extended Magazine, http://jmcolberg.com/weblog/extended/archives/a_conversation_with_christian_patterson/

[4] Patterson C, Unknown Date, “Redheaded Peckerwood – Photographs and Text by Christian Patterson, Image Resource, LensCulture, https://www.lensculture.com/articles/christian-patterson-redheaded-peckerwood#slideshow

[5] Science and Media Museum, 2015, “Joan Fontcuberta: Stranger Than Fiction”, Image Resource, Exhibition Website, https://www.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/what-was-on/joan-fontcuberta-stranger-fiction

[6] Colberg J, 2014, “The Photography of Nature and The Nature of Photography”, Conscientious Photography Magazine, https://www.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/what-was-on/joan-fontcuberta-stranger-fiction