Beyond ‘literal’ photography

The diver

When is a photograph not a strictly a photograph?

This is a little question that I’ve bumped up against now and again with increasing frequency as I produce personal work that’s less literal and more abstract. I think at simplest, what we have here is a continuum from ‘straight’ untouched images of literal objects that happen to be taken from an unusual vantage with unusual light that contributes to them feeling abstracted, surreal or both, to the opposite end where there is so much manipulation going on that we are no longer sure that what we are looking at can be classified as photography instead of mixed-media art. Some ‘conceptual’ commercial work can fall into this latter category, too. What is clear is that none of these images are in any way attempting to represent themselves as transparent photojournalism. The question that I’d like to address is not so much the definition of photography as at what point we must start to unburden ourselves of conventional notions of image-making and really start trying the crazy stuff.

Night rider

Why is it even important? Well, I think it’s more to do with state of mind than anything else: if you really throw out the rule book, then the creative possibilities expand massively. This is not at all easy to do, given how much time and effort we generally spend perfecting our photographic ‘craftsmanship’ – which is really quite rigid and narrow, if you think about it. There is a definition for good exposure, good focus, good composition, and even when those roles are broken, most of the time it is so the image and its contents remain instantly recognisable and identifiable as literal objects. There is no mistaking a man for a tree, for instance; Dali can continue to rest in peace. Of late I’ve been increasingly thinking that whilst mastering all of these controls can leave one with a very competent image, we soon run out of possible composition options when faced with situations and scenes that are physically constrained by man to begin with. There are really not that many compositional structures that work for a given perspective* – shoot enough and you’ll see what I mean; it’s very easy to fall into a habit of pattern recognition and not try anything beyond that.

*To be a subject of a future article, but proving rather difficult to illustrate in a universal way.

Seeing the forest from the trees

Even factoring in luck, gesture and storytelling – where something truly unexpected, unique and serendipitous occurs – it’s exceedingly difficult to make a truly one-off image. I think we’re actually seeing that proven today as the more images are taken under every possible imaginable condition and the total number of images in popular circulation rises, there are fewer standouts – why? Because even though a given single image may be unique, it’s not necessarily recognisably different without close study. And the more images get shot and shared, the harder it’s going to get – just think of images taken around famous landmarks; it is nearly impossible not to capture something that’s been done before. Historically, famous images in the earlier days of photography were just that because they often captured and immortalised something that had never been done before; allowing an extremely transient moment to be studied and appreciated by a wide audience at leisure.

Dawn to dusk

We still have that opportunity today; the only difference is the source material must now come from within our imaginations, stimulated by observations from the real world, and translated with a little help from technology. Without this, I suspect we ourselves will get disillusioned and cease to make images in the long run. Regular readers will know that I’m not a fan of the tone mapped HDR that rose to popularity in the early days of digital photography; ostensibly to overcome dynamic range limitations of early cameras, but eventually turned up to eleven to recreate something akin to an acid trip (without the negative effects). Regular readers will also know I’ve never been a fan of digital effect filters for the simple reason that they tend to outsource a large portion of the creative work to the programmer, and worse, the effect itself almost always distracts from the subject and composition of the image. So how is what I’m saying now any different?

The dreamer

What hasn’t changed is that each individual image should still be processed to best present the intended idea; whether that’s a filter or something else is of course down to that specific idea and its creator. I still don’t personally believe in filter or HDR use for the simple reason that neither technique helps to convey any of my ideas, though they may of course work for other people. I have been skirting the edges a bit with multiple exposures, overlays and strange curves; of course none of these things are even remotely new in themselves, but personally – it’s a whole new world for me. Anatomy of the Quotidian was my first serious attempt at this.

Just your average forest

Not only has the rulebook gone out the window, the more I find I try to keep to the existing visual sensibilities of what looks good/ balance/ attractive but within the new framework of what’s possible, the stranger the results get. I don’t know what this is anymore; in my mind it’s no longer photography in the strict definition of the term since none of the results are really straight out of camera, nor are they possible without some significant manipulation – and in some cases, digital-only effects like changes to layer blending properties that have no real analog equivalents. I have to admit that the whole thing has left me a little uncomfortable and often returning quickly to my preconceived ideas of what precise photography should be – perhaps unfairly and incorrectly.

Past and present

If anything, this may be because most of my work has revolved around observation: finding a subject or scene of interest and then expanding my observation to what surrounds it to try to build a story with the available elements; even when on assignment I work much the same way, except the initial list of subjects is pre-curated down somewhat based on the overall objectives and deliverables for the job. Rarely do I initiate a concept or project from scratch and shoot purely to that objective without any other restricting factors; partially it’s a consequence of having always worked and being trained that way, and partially it’s because so much of photography published is of the literal, conventional type – devoid of any further derivation beyond translation to a visible image.

The divide, from Over Australia

Moving beyond that, then, is going to require much, much tighter definition and previsualisation of the idea and the end visual far in advance of capture, to ensure that we capture the right material to make the end goal – all the more critical that the end goal must be assembled from constituent parts with sufficient overlaps to ensure continuity. The images used to illustrate this post were deliberately chosen because they were conceived before they were shot – and only came together with the right raw material. They are photographic derivatives rather than photographs; everything from mild curve use and retoning to multiple images to hardware glitches, color filters over lights to merged images from different times, to stitching errors and serious sensor overloads and clipping/recovery. It’s a brave new world. What do you want to say? MT

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Images in this post are available as Ultraprints on request here

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