• 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.

Introduction

We are introduced to the work of William Eggleston [1], who photographed scenes and objects that were connected with the presence of people rather than making them the subject. By excluding the people from the picture, the viewer must use their imagination to interpret what they are looking at. The notes make the point that imagination plays a key role in building a story, which in the case of Eggleston’s pictures has to do so with the must subtle of contextual signifiers. The point is also made that when children play with a generic doll, their imagination takes the basic construct and builds a personality and story for it in their play. Back in Expressing Your Vision, I wrote about a piece of research carried out by NASA[2] that involved a creativity experiment with a test group of young children. The study covered their growth and development over some 15 years or so charting their creativity as they got older. The basic premise was that as we grow and learn about the ideas, constructs and rules in the world, we become more reasoned and methodical which results in our creativity being diminished. The percentage of ‘genius’ level children dropped exponentially within the first couple of years of the experiment, becoming next to zero before the group reached their teen years. My experiences at the time of writing that paper were that the only way I could regain some idea of creativity as to revert to a childlike state in the way I see the world. When I look at the artists who use traces of people within a space or related to an object or scenario, I have that same feeling of wondering about the possibilities for meaning in the work. In my submission for Assignment 4[3], I deliberately left real people out of the images because I wanted the impact on the town to be the more obvious narrative than the suffering of its inhabitants. Facsimiles of people appear in a few of the shots, which created a sense of ‘being there but not being there’. I see the same feelings around the absenteeism of the works in Project 1.

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

With this concept, the photographer transitions from being someone who observes events unfolding and documents reality, to someone who imagines what the scene might relate to. As we have learned previously, photography has always been a powerful way of documenting as the idea the majority of people still believe that the camera merely copies what is presented to it. We know from the documentary artists of the early 20th Century that this isn’t the case. Their attention to particular subjects, the editing and often censoring of images to suit a narrative, means that they could be seen as both honest and deceitful in equal measure. If a photographer chooses to shoot something where what is missing from the frame isn’t factually important, I see that as a move to conceptual art. We’ve seen plenty of conceptual artists who use photography as their medium, e.g. Duane Michals, but their work still revolves around a real subject. The difference here is that the narrative directed or controlled with the same precision. Any idea of story or documentary is largely the responsibility of the viewer, whose idea may be vastly different from the original intent of the artist. The notes point out the difference between knowing something about the subject (having been to Memphis) or being shown a version of it (Eggleston’s view). I think that this is another power that this style of photography has; to tease a real place or situation, while creating a reality that is entirely their perspective on it. This is more powerful when there are no real actors in the scene.

Do you tend towards fact or fiction?

When I review the work I’ve done so far, I tend towards fact. Again, I think that this is more about photography, in particular the camera, being a recorder of either something real or something I’ve observed about something real. In this module, I have learned about guiding a particular narrative by using portraiture and environment. In my approaches to the assignments, I’ve tended to look for a story behind someone’s life or to reveal something real about their personality. In Assignment 1, I got to know complete strangers (some of whom I still talk to on my morning walks), while in Assignment 2 it was more about revealing something about eccentricity. Assignment 3 was a personal reflection on my life in the context of music technology. In Assignment 4 I was trying represent the contrast in mood between the experiences of my community and government rhetoric. In each case, I was looking for facts to exploit.

How could you blend your approach?

At the end of Assignment 3, I felt that it was time to consider how to blend styles. My idea for Assignment 4 is inspired by the work of former OCA student Michael Colvin’s series Rubber Flapper. I was struck by how he had been inspired by something real in both history and his own life. Instead of digging deeper into the story of the lady who lived in the self-cleaning house, he elected to make up his own story. The anchoring of some of the plot of his story in actual events, e.g. the relationship between Alice Austen and Gertrude Tate) and his views of the acceptance of people’s sexuality from a gay man’s perspective, really add weight to the series. I was particularly drawn to how realistic the series was, with an entirely believable narrative that I found myself Googling to see if any of it was real. I think that my own idea for Assignment 4 will pick up on some of Colvin’s approach, blending real and imaginary in a way where it’s hard to tell the difference. This is probably where I am with my photography than more abstract conceptual art.

Where is your departure from wanting/needing to depict reality

My idea for Assignment 5 is to retell a classic ghost story that has become an urban legend[4]. The original story (or at least one of the many versions) involves a man picking up a female hitchhiker late at night and driving her home. During the drive, the man gives her his coat to keep her warm. Only when he drives away from dropping her off does he realise that she still has his coat on. He drives back to the house that he dropped her off at the following morning only to learn from the grieving owner that the girl was her deceased daughter. She tells the man where the girl is buried and when he visits her grave, he finds his coat neatly folded on the gravestone. I’ve loved this story for most of my life as I remember my friends telling each other when we were young, swearing an oath that it was completely true. My series is going to retell the story in a contemporary setting and will blend the fiction of the narrative taking real-world experiences as cues for the shots.

In taking this approach for the final assignment of this unit, I am looking to push myself away from my default position of representing reality. The reason is simply to try something different.

References

[1] OCA, Unknown Date, “Part Five:Removing the Figure”, page 110, Identity and Place Course Notes.

[2] Fletcher R, 2019, “The Creativity of Children”, OCA Blog Post, https://richardfletcherphotography.photo.blog/2019/11/01/the-creativity-of-children/

[3] Fletcher R, 2021, “Assignment 4: Image and Text”, OCA Blog Post, https://richardfletcherphotography.photo.blog/2021/11/06/__trashed/

[4] D’Costa K, 2013, “Why is American Folklore Overrun with Phantom Hitchhikers?, Blog Post, Scientific America, https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/anthropology-in-practice/why-is-american-folklore-overrun-with-phantom-hitchhikers/