As it is

A fascination with reality

It’s been a while since I’ve read either John Berger or Susan Sontag, and don’t recall their precise view on the truthfulness of photography, yet the idea has been developing in my head for a few weeks.

The question of truth has framed the photographic art form from the beginning. Leading to an active rejection of reality in the early days, resulting in Pictorialism, to a later embrace in the documentary movement. Impacting how photos are displayed and even how they are taken, from the inclusion of the negative border to prove the image wasn’t cropped, to the resurgence of analogue methods, in part due to the perception of its authenticity.

I’ve touched on these ideas here in which I discuss taking photos as I see the world, and here on how we can believe what we see in the finished image. The summary of the two articles might be, photos that look as close to reality as possible, and you need to trust the person who made them.

Photography is the first visual medium in which it is possible to depict reality as it is. Yes, there are limits to technology and a defining element of the medium, the frame; which implies the exclusion of detail, both in exactly what was in frame and exactly when was in frame. But given those limitations, if you trust the author and their process, you can assume what you see, actually happened.

There is of course a snag, did it happen through what freewill the subjects depicted might have or was a scene somehow orchestrated. Was something in the frame moved just so, a distracting orange cone shifted a few meters say. Or a subject asked to look towards, or away from the camera, or even told precisely what to wear, how to hold their body and all lighting artificially produced.

Yesterday, I took an image that crystallized the idea I’ve been dancing around, for me. While there is nothing inherently wrong with orchestration, it doesn’t preclude the result from being photography, it is not the kind of imagery I care to consume, or produce. A simple description might be documentary photography or photojournalism but many of my images are of no great social value, they are just a record of the world as it is, or more precisely, as it was. Street photography is another label that comes close, finding beauty in chance encounters. Candid photography perhaps comes closest.

While there may be formal, semi objective qualities to some of my favourite images, if they would have been orchestrated, they’d hold no value in my view. It’s the fact that the scene unfolded in front of me, and I was able to capture a slice of it in a visually pleasing way that makes the image.

The image in question, is of my two children playing. The whole scene lasted perhaps 15 seconds, and I took two images. My daughter was standing chatting to me while I read; for reasons unclear to me, she had put on a red coat. My son ran in waving a flashlight, and I managed to grab my camera, which was on a table next to me, and take two frames, then he ran out.

While I might like the image for technical reasons, I love the image, due to the absurdity, and beauty of real life. I could not have dreamt up the scene, dressed the subjects and asked them to pose. I don’t know if people are able to pose three and five year olds, I assume there are kids in ads, perhaps they are glued to the spot or promised copious amounts of chocolate. Otherwise they are composite shots from green rooms or such.

Below are a handful of images which are the result of constantly looking, and ensuring a camera is generally on my person. All shot in the last month. Scenes that presented themselves to me, unassisted.

While images of my children embody this beauty and absurdity, often in a very literal sense. I also pause to look at otherwise mundane scenes and appreciate these qualities in them.

Below are three examples, all taken in the last week. None would necessarily win an award, or even fit into a category to do so, yet I love them. They are not overly complicated, not trying to be clever, only simple studies of light I find falling around me.

Can one do candid photography of a tree, or a leaf? Do such labels or categories even provide any value? Is it still candid, if the subject has spotted you but not changed what they were already doing. Can I start a new genre of “as it is” or perhaps, “as it was” photography to signal my intentions.

Two ideas that I keep coming back to, are that none of these images were preconceived and all of them happened recently, neither looking back or forward. Only at the now. While I don’t think its impossible to like your old work, I have images hung on my wall I took 20 years ago. There is a particular joy in continuing to look, not rest on your catalogue, but to be moving forward. In each article I write, I use images from the last few weeks. Doubtless, there will be some projects that require a longer perspective, possibly years until there is a complete body of work. Once they are done though, I plan to move forward, as I have with previously completed projects. Perhaps this is why I prefer “as it is” to “as it was”, knowing full well that “is” is for ever passing into “was”.

I’ll keep my eyes open, and see what the world presents.