Scripted composition differs from documentary

Tableau of c.1940 elements (left, 2022) versus national documentary project (right, September 1939)

Seeing this color photo today, the many elements trigger associations and image-memories from other times and places. The photographer includes many of those cultural icons and clues in his tags: Coke, Lucky-Strike, Cigarette, Car, USA, US, Porcelain, Ford V8, Cadillac, Western, Cow-Girl, Montana, Pick-Up. The mix of car model-years is realistic, since they date from several years before and up to the target design year. The national flag may well have the 48 stars (one per state; Alaska and Hawai’i came after the time presented here). The hair and make-up seem to fit the time accurately, too. Equally important to the truthiness (facsimile of authenticity) is excluding any modern-day intrusions like satellite dish, fiber-optic overhead cables, contrails of jets, or bits of litter that point to a year far in the future from the target time of circa 1940.

In order to create this outdoor still-life picture, so many props had to be gathered and arranged. Costumes and cars were sourced, modern-day aberrations were removed, lighting had to be coordinated, and each piece of the scene had to be fine-tuned for optimum juxtaposition and use of space, volume, mass, and color. By dint of huge creative talent and imagination, the effect seems natural; at least to a casual viewer. The eye wanders around the scene seeking clues for context (where, when, who is recorded; for what occasion or purpose) and sees old-time products, font-style, and so on. Nothing gives lie to the masterful composition’s performance. And yet, somehow it is not living. Perhaps this is the analogy of “live TV audience” versus a news or entertainment or educational show that has been pre-recorded and edited for optimum production values (best audio, ellipsis of empty passages, sequences rearranged for best grasp or for dramatic effect in viewers, possibly a musical track added to fit, laugh-track judiciously applied). By contrast, while there is risk of unscripted movement, intrusion, or juxtaposition; and when each subject in the frame brings their own purposes and degree of self-awareness (or the reverse, utterly un-selfaware), then the moment frozen at the shutter’s release is “live drama,” not scripted.

There can be a delicate line that separates a purely spontaneous composition snapped on the street versus the incremental intrusion of the photographer’s hand at work to supply a prop to the subject, to frame the place and wait for desired movement to fill the space, or even deliberately to rearrange the deck chairs to form a pleasing abstraction of shadows in the larger frozen moment. In other words, to some extent, all photos involve the person actively imposing a vision onto the found scene. Choice of lens, settings, framing, and moment of capture make a picture from one person differ to that of another; one perhaps bland, the other edgy. One picture can push to make a political statement or suggested association and insinuation, while another picture can pull the subject into the past by emphasizing its place in history and things gone by. Rather than “taking” pictures that present themselves “as is, ready-made for capture,” it is probably safer to say that pictures are “made” in the many small and large decisions leading up to an exposure being committed to film or memory card.

Besides the controlled composition, hearkening to Pictorialism (efforts to use camera to make pictures with a family resemblance to paintings: light, color, look and feel), the historical congruity (absence of anachronisms shattering the appearance of a historical period scene), the technical excellence (minimizing distractions to viewer immersion in the scene), and plausibility (would such a moment fit the time/place, or is it incongruous) there has to be something more to account for in order to make the “artist’s recreation” as life-like as possible. The analogy of mortician art comes to mind: making a corpse appear life-like offers some comfort to the bereaved family and friends by allowing the last memory to be something like the living person, rather than the organic shell of the personality known and loved. Similarly of a composition that intends a historical recreation: making it as close to real-life as possible does help viewers to remember, or to see for the first time, what the look and feel (indeed, smell and sound and taste) was like. However authentic those realistic effects may appear, what lies under the surface of costumes and props is practically impossible to reestablish. “Playing the part” is more than surface appearances and scripted lines. To come alive the performers must include attitudes and aspirations that fit the moment, too.

What lies under the surface in a “live” photo shoot is immense: personality, intentionality, popular culture, unspoken rules as well as posted rules for behavior, and the unscripted actions and reactions between all the subjects interacting at the time of (snap, spontaneous or semi-preframed) composition. In other words, returning to the two photos at the top of this article, the scripted composition does artfully evoke a particular time and place in a mostly anonymous way. But it differs to the adjacent documentary photo because of granularity of detail (the September 1939 shot in Rice, Minnesota is filled with minutiae), the psychological and cultural past experiences and future hopes carried in the faces and hearts of those present, and the possibility of unexpected subjects appearing or disappearing in the frame, as well as unanticipated reactions or non-reactions between subjects in the picture (adding or reducing dramatic interest).

Turning to the blog theme of “see to think,” perhaps there is something to be learned from this difference between controlled and scripted experience (like the lefthand photo, above) and situations that are unscripted and not rehearsed for public performance or spectating. One lesson has to do with the individual tolerance for order versus disorder: some like their days and lifetimes to be scheduled, budgeted, insured, and guaranteed. Others minimize those foundational parts of their experience and live from moment to moment, reacting rather than planning and accomplishing intended goals. For one person serendipity is incidental, but for the other person the things that fortuitously appear are the fruit of a life well lived; not incidental but primary and valued most highly. Some claim that a tidy space for work and living is necessary for productive and purposeful experience; that disorderliness distracts from creatively organizing and overseeing the step-by-step progress toward a goal. Others see things in the opposite way: too much order and lack of happy collisions of ideas and elements is sterile and lifeless. Leaping to a farming analogy, messy compost is considered the most fertile to grow things in. But so much of industrial scale and low retail prices comes from monocrops at vast scale which depend on fossil fuel energy, synthetic fertilizers, and poisons for animals and plants that consume the crop. Disorderly compost is overflowing with all sorts of life, both visible and invisible; tidy monocropping is a biological desert, by comparison.

Accepting the idea that all photos are “made” and not simply “taken” as they are found, then the same logic may well be true that all thinking is likewise “made” and not simply “taken”; in other words, the person who is engaging in a scene or in an intellectual exploration cannot but help from imposing some particular way of composing and selectively (subjectively) interacting with what presents itself. At one extreme the composition is conceived, arranged, and captured entirely from the artist’s imagination (fiction in its literal meaning of “made”). At the other extreme the composition is recognized for something of innate visual interest –the light, the conflicting meanings, the unusual circumstance or newsworthy moment (non-fiction in its literal meaning of “not made” but found as is). But few photos, and by extension few thoughts, fit into the extreme ends of this spectrum. Instead, just about all of them are some combination –partly “made” and partly “found” and received as is. As a result, and as in the above two photo examples, some cases are more “alive” with possibility than others. Some foreclose alternative readings; others open up more than one way to see the image.

Simplifying to see something essential

Morning light renders the colorful flowers as shadows silhouetted on the chair back.

It is not obvious which visual representation best captures the “flowerness,” a two-dimensional but full-color photo of the morning flowers in bright sunlight or the tableau of flowered silhouettes. In the abstract, artful tones of tan and dark gray the viewer’s attention only has the outline shapes to interpret. There is no way to ponder the colors and many textures of the blossoms and leaves and stems. By contrast, the full-color image of the flowers in the same backlit morning light shows viewers everything about the subject: size, texture, variation in colors and reflective surfaces, interplay of all dimensions – depth, height, width. Unmediated by the fabric back of the chair, the full flower scene invites all sorts of thinking and appreciation. But by seeing just the outlines, some sort of distillation is imposed; only part of the total subject is presented for intense scrutiny, freed from the deep context of all dimensions.

Whole essays are written about the merits of converting digital color composition into grayscale versions, of shooting in a specialized digital camera with a monochrome-only sensor, or indeed of committing to film photography in black and white. By analogy to theatrical films, documentaries, photo essays, or black-and-white TV, at the time when no color option was practical or widespread, viewers intuited colors as an integral part of interpreting what is happening in the scene or identifying the subject being represented. An even heavier interpretive burden is present when readers see a halftone image printed in newspapers or magazines before the days of color. The mesh of holes that allow an image to be attached to the newsprint is something like a screendoor separating the subject from the viewer. It is possible to disregard that interference and focus on the subject printed or the one beyond the screendoor, but the barrier is there, nevertheless.

It is hard to know completely or precisely what happens when memories of images come from black-and-white originals. Does a person hold the memory “as is,” in monochrome, or instead automatically add it to other representations in full color that were gathered from personal experience and from other images. In other words, does the b&w image retain is colorless character, or does the visual memory sometimes intuit color to the subject: not exactly knowing the original colors, but parenthetically accepting that there is color inherent in the real-world instance of it.

People who praise black and white describe the added power it has over most color compositions because rather than falsely immersing the viewer in a living visual experience or facsimile of “being there,” the opposite effect happens. The viewer’s distance and abstraction from the subject is emphasized. The viewer really does feel like a spectator, not a virtual participant or witness who is present with the photographer at the moment of capture. As a result of this emphasis on the separation of the image from the scene, it is natural and pleasurable to adopt a contemplative stance, unhurriedly wandering around the image with one’s eyes, noticing patterns and relationships that might go unnoticed or maybe not seen as meaningful in a full-color rendering of the composition. Things such as the geometry, texture, juxtaposition, and timing of the photo may well stand out in b&w more than with color. Compelling color shots can feel like a window, even without glass to separate the viewer from the scene. But compelling b&w shots offer an object of study and aesthetic wondering, much like a gallery painting mounted on a wall; never a window to a place one seemingly could simply step into.

Thinking of this shadow photo for #worldphotographyday, by simplifying a colorful and complicated subject into outlines traced as shadow silhouettes on a fabric background something essential about the flowers can be seen that is largely unnoticed in the ordinary color snapshot of the group of summer flowers. Analytically, scientists of life often distinguish between anatomy (structures), physiology (functions or processes), and behavior (cognition and activities alone and in relationship to others). This simplified flower view draws attention to structure by discarding all the other dimensions of function, behavior, as well as many other dimensions of structure itself (texture, color, depth and density). So, this conversion from complicated subject to a simple design is a good example of the saying that “less is more.” Because so much information is discarded or excluded, appreciation of what little is left comes to the mind of the viewer.

Turning to the theme of the articles in this blog about “seeing to think,” the simplification experience applies equally well to the world of ideas and impressions, too. By reducing the scope of sensation and range of things to observe, attention is not spread out across many dimensions and facets. Instead, engagement with the subject is narrowed and scrutiny can produce possibly the best blossoms.

Light is like DNA genes that turn on or off

Morning dull light (left; Samsung a21) vs. evening brightly backlit (right; Canon g9x-ii) to see false sunflowers in bloom.

In the world of DNA research there are studies of genes that “turn on” or “turn off” at particular moments in the sequence of fetal development. Depending on what comes before and after the gene being expressed, how long that state of on or off persists, and the chronological moment (early or late) for a particular gene expression alone (and with reference to co-occurring, coordinating genes that are being expressed), the results in the creature being born can vary widely. See also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatiotemporal_gene_expression

Looking at theses similar photos of bright yellow summer flowers much of the structure and context of the subject is the same, despite using different cameras about 36 hours apart. But one is overcast light from the east on a morning of rain showers to come and the other comes earlier in the week at evening with the westering sun backlighting the stems and flowers. Although the analogy stretches a bit thin, this example of changing light producing very different results is something like the DNA description, above, in which genes are expressed (or suppressed) differently in one person and the other, one guppy and the other, one pine tree and the other. The essential structure of the plant in this photo collage is unchanged, but the visual experience of overcast (indirect) light that is weak versus direct light that is strong could not be any more different.

Just as the addition of a strong spotlight, or less dramatically the addition of fill-light (artificial or by use of reflectors of the natural, ambient light), will affect the viewing experience in a location-specific, time-specific way —now standing out; now blended into surroundings, so, too, of genes in “spatio-temporal expression” (Wikipedia, above). In other words, the same location or featured subject can take on very different character, according to changed lighting. Things like the season (angle to the horizon of the sun’s course), the weather and atmospheric conditions, the time of day, position of light in relation to the subject (back, front, side, indirect or direct lighting), and the presence (or absence) or artificial light can dramatically affect the mood, atmosphere, and overall “look” of the composition.

In a studio, the lighting can be arranged to taste for intended effect. But out of doors at a fixed location or while drifting in a photowalk, the lighting conditions are usually in flux. Some photographers are particularly keen on long shadows of early and late in the day, others are excited by twilight, with some who like rain and mist, and a few who hunt photos at night. As such, very often when in the field, there is an element of serendipity when light catches the eye and calls out to be framed in a composition for others to see. The moment of discovery or noticing a picture hiding in plain sight adds special thrill or feeling of receiving an unexpected gift. Therefore, the changing conditions of light on the subjects in front of the lens shares something with the DNA gene timing: turn on the factor and the resulting form or functions changes. Turn on the lighting condition at a certain place-and-time (spatio-temporal) and the resulting portrayal of the subject changes.

Every day and all around the path one takes through the waking hours the lighting conditions are changing. Passing by a ordinary place most days, the subjects go unnoticed. But when conditions momentarily “turn on” with bright light or a break in the weather, then that spot is transformed for a time into something out of the ordinary, a time out of time. Extending to the realm of thinking these observations about how the unremarkable suddenly can be transformed for a moment or two, there is a new book by Kerri ni Dochartaigh called Thin Places about trauma, cultural landscape, and memoryscape. A location can unexpectedly trigger memories that blur into the present and/or future and/or past in such a way that what once was sharply separated with thick spacing now changes to very thin boundaries that divide past from present and future; what is tangible from what is living within one’s mind. This same observation about the ordinary suddenly or slowly shifting in appearance (light turned on or off; genes turned on or off) seems equally true of the life and terrain of the mind. If a thought is triggered by external events, chance meetings with others, or the momentary brush with an idea in book or radio or online video, then what previously had lain dormant or unfertilized now can change and grow. In the presence of a catalyst, the germ of an idea now can grow, thanks to the co-occurrence of circumstances, context, and adjacent conditions.

In summary, whether it is a change in light (photography), a change in gene expression (spatiotemporal), or the emergence of an idea and its communication to others for further transformations and permutations, all of these instances spring from impulses that occur in exquisite timing, order, and duration to make what before went unnoticed, unarticulated, not expressed to become now something completely different and capable of causing subsequent ripples in what others may receive, perceive and conceive. Stated in the most personalizing terms, each human life is a kind of temporary “gene expression” that co-occurs with others in specific times and places that can catalyze glorious (or dreadful) results along the way; now turned on, now turned off. So it is worth paying attention to those times when a shift in light can make a dull scene come alive.