“Inso far as photography is (or should be) about the world, the photographer counts for little, but insofar as it is the instrument of intrepid, questioning subjectivity, the photographer is all.” ~ Susan Sontag
I INTRODUCE THE SONTAG QUOTE AS ENTRY INTO the idea of visual vs. verbal thinking as it relates to the…well, dare I write…concept of conceptual photography.
Re: visual vs verbal thinking, the ultra simple definition: verbal thinkers do most of their thinking through inner dialogue whereas visual thinkers think in pictures and spatial relationships. While people aren’t exclusively one or the other, most tend toward one or the other.
That written, I can write that I am decidedly a visual thinker; my head is, and always has been, filled to the brim with visual images. As an example, when asked for walking/driving directions I can not remember the names of streets but I can give a very detailed description of the suggested route’s landscape. Ya know, like, take the 2nd right turn past the picket fence at the yellow corner house and proceed up the rise to…and so on.
Consequently-and I think, logically-the fact that I think in pictures, call them images, and spatial relationships, it is no surprise that I was drawn, from a very early age, to the practice of making pictures, aka: art. So, that established, moving on to conceptual photography…
During my high school-all boys Jesuit institution-days, we were assigned summer reading. The books were almost exclusively of the “classic” literature variety with a few notable current works thrown in - I guess they wanted to make sure we did not spend the entire summer on the beach with a horde of sweet sixteen-ers.
In any event, I skimmed and CliffsNotes-ed my way through the assignment, barely surviving the fall semester writing assignments about the assigned books. My “problem” with the books was due to the fact that the subsequent writing assignments were intended to be a deep dive into meanings, metaphors, allegories, and the like to be found, discovered, revealed in the books. And, no matter how I tried, I could simply not find such things, aka: concepts. Or, perhaps I just did not perceive any advantage to recognizing those things. To my visually constructed thinking, they were all just stories.
That written, I have the same “problem” with conceptual photography. To my visually constructed thinking, photographs are “just” pictures. When I look at a photograph, the very first thing I see is a picture. Cuz, ya know, pictures are a visual construct. And, in order to make a photograph you do not use a typewriter, you use a light recording device that produces an actual thing that is meant to be seen, not read.
Which this suggests to me is that, if you want to say something about something, then talk or write about it. Use words. Write a book, write an essay. Hell, write a post-it note. Any of which would be better at communicating / conveying a concept-most often psychological / academic in nature-than using a medium which is intrinsically suited to show us something about something.
ASIDE am I alone in thinking that making a picture of an actual real world thing as a metaphor for something else is kinda oxymoronic? Kinda like the title of an essay, re: conceptual photography, I read long ago - A Milk Cow Is Not a Black Helicopter And That’s a Fact. END ASIDE
My Conclusion: Photography is a visual medium. Photographs are meant to be seen cuz, in the best of cases, a photographer’s questioning subjectivity about the world is primarily directed in the cause of showing us how he/she sees the world. And, for me / my eye and sensibilities, my pleasure and joy. re: viewing of photographs, is in seeing how the world looks when photographed, not only by me but also when photographed by the (unique) vision of other photographers*.
*iMo, re: Sontag’s “the photographer is all”; I agree with that sentiment inasmuch as the most interesting / engaging photographs are made by photographers who bring their unique, personal vision to bear in the making of their photographs. However, for my eye and sensibilities, it is, and always will be, the tangible results of that vision, aka: a photograph, that is the “all”.
