Reading photographic images

I meant to mention the following in my post about Keith Carter;

'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.

Keith Carter

"I never felt childhood was an idyllic play in pristine green parks.  Any parent knows that children don't spend all their time laughing, smiling and playing.  Left to their own devices they are often pensive, absorbed, alarmingly attuned to the changing mood of their parents, aware when something is amiss with mom and dad, and occasionally solitary"

Keith Carter in the Introduction to Fireflies 

I think when I get round to redesigning my own website I will use this quote somewhere.  It is a much more eloquent version of something I say already about photographing children and families.  I was enthralled by Keith Carter's introduction when I first read it. His idea of childhood, of how to capture it and how to relate to children resonates loudly with with me.  And I am totally besotted with his photographs too!

Keith Carter became a commercial portrait photographer in Beaumont, Texas after growing up and watching his mother work as one too.  She bravely as it was not usual used natural light and outdoor settings as well as her studio, having set up after her husband left her and she had to make a living and bring up her children.

Carter did not want to have a shop front studio in a mall or on the high street but instead found a property with outhouses so he could live and work in the same environment, although he keeps his home and studio very separate and rarely hangs his own work in his home.  He has worked commercially as well as developing his artistic practise,  and during his lifetime has become a well known artist whose images are exhibited worldwide.

I love reading about his approach to working with children.  "When making these images Carter often asked the children, '"Do you have something you would like to be photographed with?"'  This creative collaboration between photographer and subject has produced images that conjure up stories, dreams and imaginary worlds."  

I  know that often the most successful photographs I have taken of children are the ones where they have contributed in some way to the process, although it is good to read that sometimes the results are "...mediocre.  Other times the centre holds and the results are (as) graceful...".  I know from past experience that working collaboratively in any field is a good way to achieve creative and interesting results but it requires a degree of trust in oneself and more than a modicum of generosity of spirit plus patience. Children in our own culture are wildly underestimated, bought up to believe they are not capable and so grow up thinking that is the truth, which renders it the truth until their minds are changed.  It can in some cases be quite challenging to get them to open up, to believe their ideas are valid and worthy of consideration.  I wonder if the more controlling the parents are the less concentrated the children can be, the more difficult it is for me to connect with them and I do struggle under these circumstances.  If I continue working with kids then I would like to work towards being able to click in with them under any circumstances and to find a way to circumvent my own shut-down responses when I find myself in tricky dynamics.  Of course, the more I do this and the less I have to worry about the technology the better too.

Carter says, "I soon learned that kids, particularly young ones, have a short attention span.  I learned to work quickly and never to schedule an appointment near nap time.  I let them look me over when I first arrived at their homes.  I often talked to parents while bouncing a red ball and carrying a toy bag. Routinely I would sit down on the ground to let the children pick out toys from my bag and talk to me at their own eye level.  I picked backgrounds rapidly and and paid close attention to the whims of colour and tonality".    I could do worse than to write this down and keep it stapled to my sleeve so I always remember it when working with children. (And oh, by the way, it was Carter who mentioned Irving Penn and looking at his work to see a great example of grouping - written about here.)

He also talks about the difference between his colour commercial work which is happy, smiling and idyllic because that is what is clients are after and this is something I must remember if I'm to be have any success as a commercial family portrait photographer, which incidentally is not something I set out to do but it does seem to be heading that way for now.  My tendency to hone in on the less happy, less idyllic more honest moods isn't going to be what clients want all the time.  I'm always vaguely embarrassed by what I call the 'toothpaste advert' images - I've got to get over that.

He talks about his photographs sometimes touching on the darker side of childhood dreams although they in no way go anywhere neat the savagery of Roger Ballen's work where children are also sometimes present.  "My pictures occasionally tend towards the dark or solitary side.  In a world of truths and half-truths, the inhabitants might be amiss or fallen from grace, but my children inhabit a peaceable kingdom where everything that falls deserves a chance to be restored.  My children are beautiful, intelligent, sometimes sad, pensive, devastatingly perceptive, complex, occasionally humorous, always creative, and often inscrutable."  I am reminded of the desolation in James Elkin's book, What Photography Is and am struck by how very different these states of mind appear to be.

Carter's images in Fireflies are all taken on plate cameras using old technology, obviously all black and white.  Many have a very narrow depth of field and they are all square format.

I am quickly becoming really infatuated with old formats, very narrow depth of fields, oblique angles between camera and subject and the dream-like images, be they nightmares or more lyrical poetic dreams such as Carters.  I do adore his photographs and look forward to seeing some sense of influence emerge in my own work - let's hope so!

Taken directly from Fireflies: Keith Carter holds The Endowed Walles Chair of Visual and Performing Arts at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, and is the recipient of a 2009 Texas Medal of Arts Award and the Lange-Taylor Prize from the Centre for Documentary Studies at Duke University.  He is the author of ten previous books...()...Carter's work is included the collections of the National Gallery of Art; the Art Institute Chicago; the Smithosian American Art Museum; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the George Eastman House; and the Wittliff Collections' Southwestern & Mexican Photography Collection.

All quotations are take from Fireflies By Keith Carter, University of Texas Press, 2009.
Keith Carter's website