Visual Perception: Photography

12 January 2005

Events caught on film are often thought of as truth as they describe an exact copy of what occurred. This capacity to document the world is unique to photography. Once the photographer has decided on the composition of the scene, light from this scene is focused by the camera and is captured by chemicals on the photographic film. In this way the camera records all of the details that are visible in the whole scene.

Although it may be the case that a photograph captures the truth of a moment in time, I was interested in the concept that we never see the world like this, in the state of time standing still. An event can only be fully understood by us in its context; by what happened before and what happened after. When the photograph is taken and the image frozen we might wonder how and why the subjects and/or objects got there. Are they taken from a real setting or has the composition been created as a still life or a dramatic pose. This is part of the wonder that we sometimes feel when looking at a photograph.

‘The Terminal’ by Steiglitz (1893) is to me a beautiful photo because despite the rough, unsophisticated subject, it portrays the moment in an intimate way. A picture of a tram arriving, the photograph tells a simple story of a snowy day in urban New York. The cold atmosphere of day comes across in the dirty snow on the ground and the steam coming from the horses being watered. The steam adds to the dynamism of the picture (you can almost hear the horse snorting). It gives a sense of anticipation, of a journey, the horses and carriages following the arc traced the tracks.

While the horses wait patiently, the man goes about his business, tending to them, his leaning stance gives a very familiar easy feel to the picture. Albert Stiegletz writes of the photograph: ’How fortunate the horses seemed, having a human being to tend them . ... The steaming horses being watered on a cold winter day, the snow-covered streets ... [expressed] my own sense of loneliness in my own country’

In his book Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes raises philosophical questions about the nature of photography and photographs. In order to find the thing in a photograph which moves him, which makes the photograph more than just an image, he defines two phenomena, a ‘studium’ or ‘field’ of reality that helps us relate to an image by virtue of our own experience. He says ‘What I feel about these photographs derives from an average affect, almost from a certain training’. The other phenomena, the one which triggers emotion above that of the familiar studium, is the punctum,‘a wound’, something that breaks that field of familiarity, clashes with our understanding of the world, punctuates the picture and causes an emotional response, ‘a detail that attracts or distresses me’. He says ‘the only thing by Stieglitz that delights me (but to ecstasy) is his most famous image (‘The Horse Car Terminal’)’. Perhaps it is this feeling of intimacy in such a public scene that is so striking and creates the punctum in this image.

In the still image, without the punctum, the emotional stimulus, with only the studium, the cultural reference present, figures are motionless ‘anesthetized and fastened down, like butterflies’. In contrast, as we watch a film we experience what he calls a ‘blind field’, an understanding, or empathy with the subjects. He goes on to say, that this .blind field can also be created in an otherwise still image. And it is these details, the stimuli to emotion, the punctum, that lead us to create, a life, an energy, an understanding, external to the frame, the ’ blind field ’ which takes on its own existence within our thoughts. However, film is different from the still image. It does not allow time for thought. In the cinematic space ’ [the photographic] referent shifts, it does not make a claim in favour of its reality’. Thus the photograph can be much more powerful.

Nick Ut’s famous picture of the Vietnam War, 1972. Children run screaming down the road, American soldiers strolling almost nonchalantly behind, black smoke in the background. It is a shocking image. When we know the story, that they are running away from their village that has been attacked by napalm, that the young girl at the centre of the picture has been badly burnt and that ’Ittook many years, and 17 operations, to save her life.’ the image is very much more horrific. This event is also on film (Vicki Goldberg, in her book The Power of Photography, describes the full: filmed sequence:[T]he naked girl and the others ... ran toward us rather slowly, like people finishing their run. They passed the camera, it followed from behind. The girl’s back and arm were seen to be completely covered with black patches of burned skin, no longer resembling flesh. American soldiers gave her a drink and poured water over her.) but the horror of the photograph is far more enduring.

Itis this space that is left, the image frozen in time, documenting the terror, the truth. We cannot shrug it off like we could with the film. We have emotionally engaged with the image leaving us no choice but to try to understand the horror.

Vietnam’s Most Harrowing Photo: From Guilt to Grace, By Charles Paul Freund, Posted Friday, November 22, 1996, at 12 :30 AM PT http://www.slate.msn.com

Wellesey College Index of Vietnam Images, http://www.wellesey.edu

Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes, 1980, Vintage

20th Century Photography, Museum Ludwig Cologne, 1996, Taschen

Alfred Stieglitz, Apperture Masters of Photography, 1989