It is the ambitious photographer’s job to find, define, redefine, configure and reconfigure the symbolism present in the world. The photographer must continue the job of Adam but go further in naming things not just in and of themselves but as either something new, or more significantly, to give it a new character in relation to something else. Perhaps to everything else.
Take a tree and see a ghost. Photograph it as a ghost and you’ve created a new symbol whereby the world is now full of green and brown ghosts that grow and watch over our fields and fences. The ur-symbol has been reconfigured and that reconfiguration changes all instances of that symbol, and also adds new meaning to juxtapositions of that symbol with something else, like a field or a fence.
This truth is central to understanding how a photographer creates work beyond the first level of the obvious meaning. This second level intra-meaning can appear obviously on the surface of a picture itself but often results in trite, and cliché images. Not always, but often. There is more opportunity of reconfiguration in the spaces between images, that is, in the interplay between a set of pictures. Robert Frank’s work is an excellent example of a consistent reconfiguration of symbols according to a idee fixe. With The Americans however, he was able to reconfigure symbols within many of the photos themselves as well as producing meaning between the images, as well as holistically. Bravo, Robert Frank.
For a photographer, I’m not sure how feasible it is to consciously attempt this kind of reconfiguration. Rather, I think it is something that first, comes out of the character and personality of the photographer, and second, if it can be consciously manipulated at all, can be most easily done in the slower process of editing rather than the whirlwind battle of shooting.
A charge may be laid that, well aren’t you just giving a fancy name to telling a coherent story? No, what I’m talking about is telling a deeper story by not just using the meaning of pictures at their face value, which you do have to do of course, but finding and using deeper symbols amongst separate pictures and in-between large number of pictures to say consistently what you want to say.
Atget is a master of this in his later years. Perhaps it is best done over decades rather than mere years. I think this idea is useful in studying photographers like Winogrand and Evans who’s work’s significance or coherence often come from a consistent feeling. Often, this kind of symbol reconfiguration manifests as a feeling for the work, or the photographer. And the best photographer will engender the strongest, most consistent feeling amongst his viewers. It means that he has grasped, perhaps intuitively, his personal symbolic vocabulary, and has learnt the appropriate syntax.
Why do I feel like I’m writing bullshit? I will state the what I’m trying to say as simply as I can say it: there are symbols in the world, a fence can be a restraint to freedom, or a protective cacoon for instance. A photographer can create greater depth in his work by being aware of these symbols, which are often quirks of his own personality, in individual pictures but more importantly in the way he selects and orders pictures, and for the work as a whole. Now this isn’t new stuff, photographer and image makers have been doing this for centuries, but the number of images presented in photography and presented as a whole thing gives photography the unique potential to say something with symbols consistent throughout a set of images rather than singles. Done, good. I’m really sure this is not a new idea in art history. New to me though, and useful for the Twilight edit.
Posted 2 years ago
