Topic 4: READING PHOTOGRAPHS
Concerning the reading of photographs.
Photographs are texts which can be read rather than devices for communication(1). Do you feel uneasy with the idea of reading a photograph? Reading takes time and focus; mental exertion. Images flash before us. Present themselves in whole. We perceive them, not read them.
I have often played a little game. Go to a gallery alone. Spend time looking at a work. Often this will be selected because I enjoy this work or wish to learn something about it, but sometimes I select a work that has not endeared itself to me or has been written off due to my taste or lack of context. I spend time breaking down the work. Looking and thinking simultaneously. Scanning the details and allowing the connections and meanings to reveal themselves. I stand close. I stand far away. I challenge myself to ‘see’ everything. To experience the work in its entirety. Like staying to the end of a film.
Last weekend I made a trip to Dublin to see the National Photography Collection Inaugural Exhibition at the Gallery of Photography. I was particularly interested in seeing a print from Clare Gallagher’s series The Second Shift.
Clare Gallagher Untitled, from the series The Second Shift (2019) Available here.
Standing in front of this reproduction at this scale, having solely seen this work in the photobook of the series(2) I am primarily aware of its darkness. Low-lit with a deep blue colour cast its details are slightly obscured. Out of that darkness one makes out several large waxy leaves of a Swiss cheese plant. These take up most of the left hand of the frame. On the bottom right, partly hidden by the lowest leaf is the head of a boy. We see his dark hair, left ear and shoulder. His eyes, nose and mouth are covered by the leaf. He wears a chocolate brown wool jumper. Behind him, to the upper right of the frame there is a light blue curtain, which appears drawn and partially illuminated by a shaft of light. Directly in the centre of the frame, again obscured by a large leaf we glimpse parts of what appears to be another face. Even less detail is revealed here; a nose and sliver of a forehead are all we see.
The scene is lit naturally by the soft light coming from the window in the upper right of the photograph. The flat lighting and also the knowledge that Gallagher lives and works in Belfast, one can assume that this was shot on one of the many overcast days experienced in the north east of Ireland.
Although limited in visual content, there are several signifiers evident here. Most prominent are the obscured faces. They are boys' faces. They are obscured by the leaves of a large house plant. They are positioned behind this plant, on the ground and beside a window. We can assume that they are in a corner. The room lights are off. They are in semi-darkness, lit by the limited light of a grey day. The boy in the foreground looks away from the camera lens, towards the ground, his head angled. He actively averts his gaze. The face in the background is facing the camera but his eyes cannot be seen. We can not even be sure if this is a real face. This scene is cast in blue. The photograph is underexposed.
What is signified here? The low lighting, averted and obscured gazes and suggestion of hiding allude to feelings of shame or fear. Why are the boys hiding? What have they done? The combination of the avoidance of eye contact and gender of the subjects summon pre existing biases and prejudices in the viewer. Boys are bold. They do bad things. They feel shame (and anger) when they do these things. They flee or hide. The presence of the photographer, their mother, hovers as the figure of authority. Is this the figure they have fled. There are two of them, both hiding together. Co-conspirators in whatever upset they have caused. There is a melancholy here. They don’t know how to communicate and explain their actions. They seek refuge behind the plant. Perhaps the older one shields or protects the younger one in the background?
But what do I bring to this reading? How does my experience, my make-up, my pre-existing knowledge of the work persuade the way in which I stitch together the individual elements of this image? What is my share(3)? I am a father of young boys. I have been a young boy. I am an older brother. I have felt shame and hid or ran away when I misbehaved or upset my parents. I have seen my children hide when they upset me.
One must be aware that any reading of an image is seen through one’s own awareness. This is informed as much by the internal mechanisms of the viewer’s psychology, their memory and cognition, as the visual inventory within the pictorial frame. Much like we navigate the real world, we imbed upon the world of images our own perceptual framework(5).
The work of Ken Loach is summoned. Both the formal style and concept of Gallagher’s series resonate with Loach’s gritty depictions of quotidian life(4). Indeed, in her introduction to this work, the photographer tells of her desire to expose the hidden daily labour of domesticity, especially for working mothers and of her ‘call for resistance to the capitalist, patriarchal and aesthetic systems which ignore it’(6). Can we see this series as a continuation or reinterpretation of Loach’s social realism? Is this domestic realism?
Ken Loach Hidden Agenda (1990) Available here.
One can not ignore the ubiquitous presence of the swiss cheese plant here. It’s waxy fronds envelop the sitters in a Rousseau-like scene(7). Have they sought sanctuary or are they being consumed? The common houseplant formally known as Monstera is a symbol of suffocation(8). Can we read its presence as a surrogate for their mother? Does Gallagher fret over how she shapes the lives of her young sons? Or perhaps it is them, and the inherent weight of caring for them, that suffocates her?
Henri Rousseau The Equatorial Jungle (1909) Available here.
While I contemplated this image, other visitors to the gallery came through the room observing each photograph in quick succession, much like they would scroll through a sequence of posts on their phones. I wondered what they saw, why they didn’t stop and if they would tell people about their experience seeing it. I also wondered what they made of me, sitting, looking, thinking.
BARTHES, Roland and Stephen HEATH. 1977. Image, Music, Text. New York: Hill and Wang. pp. 19
GALLAGHER, Clare. 2019. The Second Shift.
WALKER, John A and Jessica Evans (ed.). 1997. The Camerawork Essays: Context and Meaning in Photography. London : New York: Rivers Oram Press ; Published in the USA by New York University Press. pp. 60
ROBINS, Mike. n.d. ‘Loach, Ken – Senses of Cinema’. [online]. Available at: https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2003/great-directors/loach/ [accessed 19 Feb 2022].
Education Theory/Constructivism and Social Constructivism - UCD - CTAG’. 2022. [online]. Available at: http://www.ucdoer.ie/index.php/Education_Theory/Constructivism_and_Social_Constructivism#:~:text=John%20Dewey%20(1933%2F1998),theorist%20among%20the%20social%20constructivists. [accessed 20 Feb 2022].
‘The Second Shift’. 2022. CLARE GALLAGHER [online]. Available at: https://www.claregallagher.co.uk/the-second-shift [accessed 19 Feb 2022].
TATE. 2022. ‘Henri Rousseau: Jungles in Paris: Room Guide: Room 2’. Tate [online]. Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/henri-rousseau-jungles-paris/henri-rousseau-jungles-paris-room-1 [accessed 19 Feb 2022].
‘Monstera’. 2022. [online]. Available at: https://www.thejoyofplants.co.uk/monstera [accessed 19 Feb 2022].
