Create or document?

From the series ‘Gravitation is relative’

I’ve come to believe that all photography falls into one of two categories: created, or documented. It’s also rather difficult to switch between the two, and people tend to find either one or the other more intuitive. I suspect this may well have something to do with left brain-right brain dominance, too. This underlying split is important because it dictates the kind of photographer you are, and the kind of work that best suits one’s intuitive vision. It isn’t a continuum, because the one thing that splits the two sides of the divide is binary: was something in the scene added or removed at the control of the photographer, presumably for the express intent of translating and communicating the vision of the photographer to the audience?

Observation and documentary

Curiously, I think this is also the same perceptual or expected divide that separates photojournalism and the illusion of objectivity/ intention of integrity from the creative arts. The moment something in the frame has been added, removed, or changed by the photographer to better suit their imagination, we tip over into creative: that scene did not exist in that form until the photographer created it, and only exists in that form for that reason. On the ‘touch nothing’ end of the scale – documentary – is of course traditional photojournalism. On the other is a fantasy world that has no real definition, because – well, it can’t be defined. The only limit to the image is the creativity of the photographer: most commercial work and ‘conceptual’ photography falls into this category; the sets must be constructed; the models selected, facial expressions guided, light determined and created, and repeats undertaken until all stakeholders are happy. The final output must match the expectations of the imagination, and the photographer is as much screenwriter as conscious observer.

On the other hand, the documentary style of photography is only and entirely about conscious observation: you are capturing what you saw, not what you imagined: the scene existed in physical state before your arrival, and will continue to do so after you leave. You add, remove and change nothing, other than a record of the subjects in front of your camera. This is perhaps the truest definition of ‘taking a photograph’: you are literally measuring the amount and frequency of the light reflected from the objects in front of you. The photographer is not using their imagination so much as their trained observation, prompted by personal biases and interests. At the subconscious level, we are drawn to what subjects that interest us prompted usually by something else other than purely making an image. These underlying motivations may vary from the need to record a unique experience or scene, to a biased interest in the subject matter, or need to earn a living by showing interest in something directed by one’s client. Here, the differentiation in skill is how well the photographer can observe, parse and capture a scene before it changes into a form that is too late to record.

Abstraction of subject, but still based on a direct ‘measuring’ of an extant scene

Note how the two types of photography require very different skill sets: technical understanding (leading to control over the image) aside, one has an entirely imaginative base, and the other an observational one. Dreaming does not typically lead to noticing the unusual, nor does an unhealthy interest in reality lead to dreams about something that doesn’t exist (i.e. the opposite of reality). I think it’s this that causes the difficulty in being really strong at both genres of photography: almost all of the studio/portrait/still life/controlled shooting photographers I’ve seen do not have any affinity with the observational or documentary genre; these are people who will perfect the most elaborate setups in the studio and spend hours on post, but use an iPhone when travelling and produce woefully bad images which have all sorts of distractions and shortcomings. There’s simply too much in the real world that’s not under control and the result of random unrelated processes to parse quickly and effectively. On the other hand, you’ve got the documentarians who can find a unique moment worthy of closer examination and preservation in seemingly ordinary scenarios, but find themselves unable to create an image of note when presented with full control; I’ve seen this type land up photographing still lifes of the studio lighting equipment in place without moving it (or using it to light itself). They need a base to start from, and once there, can run and see things the rest of us might not.

I think it’s certainly possible to transition between the two, but doing so on a regular basis leaves you somewhat in no-mans’-land, even though the imagination has to be somewhat grounded in reality: it’s difficult to figure out how to give the illusion of breaking normal if you don’t have a fairly good idea of what normal is. The same is probably also true for the documentary photographer: paying attention to the quotidian is required to present an interpretation of reality that breaks with it. I think By nature, I’m a documentary photographer: I started out observing and photographing the found rather than the created. I made images of things that I thought were personally interesting, and then tried to figure out why other people weren’t seeing what I was seeing: either they lacked common interests (fair enough) or my images fell short in the translation (usually the case). A good documentarian should be able to present something in a visually interesting way even if the subject matter itself isn’t interesting – otherwise the image won’t hold the interest of any audience for any length of time.

The beginnings of control and creation

Even when I started transitioning to creating images – at first with still life setups of single watches – I still had to observe the watch for a while before trying to figure out which angle I wanted to capture. Controlled light was a dark art because it produced results that were very, very different to what I could immediately see with the naked eye. Practice developed experience which in turn developed the ability to imagine the ‘what if’ when something in the mix was changed; I would add elements to the compositions, but still ultimately base them on a fairly limited reality (e.g. a randomly found cluster of objects on one’s table that you might pick up together with your watch before heading out of the door). Other images in which I was in control of light and subject – portraits, fashion, cars etc. – still required a degree of documentary observation to start: I’d find a location and an interesting interpretation of the subject and then try to put the two together with some element of repeatability. As unusual as some of these compositions might be, like the first image in this post – I have still not created photographs in which the entire subject or scene was not the complete product of my imagination and implausible to exist in reality. Frankly, the thought of doing so leaves me drawing a bit of a blank: I still look for a base in reality to modify rather than create my own. I suspect it’s because it requires a lot of practice to make a facsimile of a believable setting; this is something I do not have anywhere near as much experience in as pure acute observation.

Creation, revisited

Now we come to the crux of the article: of late, I’ve been having the feeling of being limited by shooting as a documenter rather than a creator. There are only so many underlying compositional structures and arrangements that are possible before the image becomes similar to something you’ve previously made, only with slight variations in subject and light. This is not interesting, and the only way to make a different image becomes to find different subjects. Of course, the more you shoot, the harder this becomes. Some types of subject offer near infinite variation – nature and people for example – but even then, the gross structures may well be fairly similar (e.g. big foreground anchor, mid ground leading elements and distant massive geological feature for landscapes; the mountains and rocks may be different, but there’s only so much you can change within the physical limits). If you photograph enough, you’ll find yourself hitting this wall sooner or later. I still strongly feel the need to create, but outside the restrictions of what I’ve previously shot or seen. The only way forwards is to make that jump, so that the limitations are my imagination rather than my physical location. I suspect the yields are going to be even lower than staying the course, even taking into account the desire to avoid repetition. But the payoff is this: in a documentary situation, the scene always exists in reality so another photographer may well capture the same or similar thing; in a creative situation, the envelope of the imagination are far more varied from individual to individual so it’s much easier to make something unique. The results should eventually be interesting… MT

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Ultraprints from this series are available on request here

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