'Over the years I tried to establish a sense of implied narrative in my photographs, hoping the viewers might find their connections."
Keith Carter, Fireflies
This seems a profoundly important sentence to me. It is only really since beginning this course that I have begun to think more deeply about narrative in photography. Andrew Conroy mentioned in the feedback for A2 that I should read Camera Lucida, where the notion of individuals finding what matters to them or bringing their own interpretation to the work when they look at photography is explored.
I had certainly considered that people see different things in film and theatre. But I don't think I had thought much about narrative in a photograph or a set of photographs. For some reason it was only after reading about the Diane Arbus image of the family on the lawn where a couple are lying down on sun-beds and a child is playing in the background that I really began to see there was much more to this photography lark than pretty pictures - that statement seems ludicrous to me now, by the way.
Of course, when we look at anything, film, theatre, any form of art we bring our own history to it. And our own way of seeing. So for instance, when I saw How to Train Your Dragon (most of my film references will be about those aimed at children nowadays) I was gobsmacked and appalled by what I saw as a blatant allegorical bit of propaganda indicating that the US is a kind and benevolent, rightfully powerful force that will overcome any ideology that threatens and opposes it and turn the perpetrators into a cute but benign group of pets, because they, the US, are obviously not monsters. My friend thought I was insane. Maybe I am. Or maybe I'm quite good at interpreting things, at making observations about what is going on beneath the surface. Or maybe I just bring my own sense of the world to everything I see and my sense is that the US would like kids to grow up thinking of it in the way I described. The point is I brought my own interpretation to the film which in essence was just a kids story about some dragons and a bunch of people with bizarrely oversized-eyes (although I'm still utterly convinced it was a painfully obvious bit of propaganda the same way all those films like The Blob in the 50s were so much about the cold war). Thankfully a lot of art has plenty of scope for an individual interpretation - giving viewers the opportunity to take away what ever they need or want from it. I like that about art.
The thing I am still unsure about is how self-aware the makers of such films or any art are. I've always wondered this. From the time we started analysing books in English at school, and the plays at college and university, and now the photographs I look at constantly I have wondered - was the author of this aware of all this? I guess it depends and varies from artist to artist and project to project. We are taught here to read, make observations, develop analytical thought and I do enjoy that although I clearly know my take on something will be different to another persons, and sometimes very different indeed. (I think about this and it further informs my burgeoning understanding which has developed over the last two years that people really do exist in very different realities - how opposing realities play out is something I am deeply interested in.)
I think about my own fairly inexperienced process and see that when the results are most creative and satisfyingly expressive it is usually when I allowed myself to reach something intuitively rather than intellectually. That's quite difficult for me. Finding the balance between planning and thinking things through beforehand and then allowing enough space once all the components are in place to find something rather than impose any fixed ideas seems to be critical, but tricky. I suppose I do start with some idea of where/what I might like to head for. I then hopefully surprise myself and find a great deal more - if I'm working as I ought to be.
Keith Carter says he tries to provide a sense of implied narrative so that people might find their own connections - I like that. He does not spoon-feed and he leaves plenty of space for the viewer to find something. That's the thing to aim for, I think.
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