British Journal of Photography June 2012

Two articles caught my eye in June BJP, both related to the search for understanding better the concept of context, and, more broadly, the requirements of academic photography to personalize.

The first is the profile of Alinka Echeverria, specifically her work on the pilgrims' march to Tepeyac Hill in Mexico. Christina Cajoulle writes a rather fawning article (rather typical of BJP it has to be said) on pp30-37. 

In the light of my research on context and narrative, I noted two things: the lack of obvious context; and the long written narrative.

Echeverria has selected 350 images of pilgrims, but instead of portraits (to quote BJP) "...she shoots them from behind, capturing the extraordinary array of honourary (sic) images  worn on the backs of the millions of devotees.

You can obtain the flavour of this from the cover of the journal:

and even better from pages 36-37:

Now what strikes me from this orderly array is the complete lack of obvious context - each individual has been carefully selected and the background has been removed. The lack of context is noticed by Cajoulle, and I quote at length:

Where have they [the pilgrims] come from and where are these people going, so laden down? Moreover, do they actually move? Are they anything other than what they carry on their backs? In real life, certainly, but not in Echeverria's photographs, which take us back - and she plays with this brilliantly - to imprecision reflected in photography, thereby obliging us to confront an image, nothing but an image. It is by the point of view that she adopts, by the radical nature of the decontextualisation [my emphasis] that she makes them undergo, that those who walk on the road to Tepeyac, whom we will never see (just as we will never see the sacred place), become a fabulous adventure of images. In a series, in a successive piling up of images and imageries. They become image because they carry an interpretation of the image they are going to venerate and because the only thing photography retains of them is this echo image of another image. And it is obviously because belief, for want of generating visions for each person, has materialised in an image become "the Image" that this is possible.

I quote at length partly as a mild criticism of "photography speak" demonstrated here by Cajoulle. I am not sure the last two sentences actually make any sense, but to be fair Cajoulle does tackle the issue of decontextualisation. I think he is trying to say that context does not matter here, because Echeverria wants us to confront nothing but the image. This is evidently true from the way she sets out the images. 


But there is an alternative explanation: that there is context demonstrated here. Return to the definition of context given by Short (2011, p5):


"...the circumstances that from the setting for an event, statement or idea. In photography the word 'context' can relate to the contents of the photograph, its placement in relation to words or other images....". 


Using this definition, we could say that Echeverria demonstrates context by placing the images next to one another in an array - she is focussing on the similarity of the mission with the contrast of the detail of how it is manifested. Geographical or sociological context is unnecessary detail in that aim.


Cajoulle writes at length on Echeverria's work - much is unfortunately photography speak, but the length of the article relative to the images is interesting:

This is nothing new, but it has helped me realize that personalization of one's photographic approach could mean using a large measure of the written word to add context and narrative. This puts me more in the comfort zone: I like writing about the photographs, providing the background both technical and aesthetic, and can see a way of combining this with the image for an effective narrative.


The second article is part of a series on graduating photographers. A very similar approach to Echeverria is taken by Daniel Lilley. He rejoined the Army Cadets as an instructor in order to take images of the cadets. One example is below:

Again, one is struck by the decontextualisation and the background narrative.


As a postscript I noticed that Lilley is wise to current technological changes, in particular the use of videography, and the taking of stills from a set of moving images. That is interesting as it is an approach I am considering for taking people unaware - it is effective in not focussing on one person and has the advantage of minimizing the risk of missing the decisive moment.

Reference:
Short, Martha (2011) Basics Creative Photography 02: Context and Narrative, AVA Publishing