Dissertation: Images and Everyday Life

Celeste Edwards

Word count: 8074

06/02/22

How do certain images of everyday life take on new meaning?

BA Graphic Design Communication

Tutor: Barbara Mueller

Contents

1. List of images 2. Acknowledgements 3. Introduction 4. Chapter 1 6. Chapter 2 7. Chapter 3 8. Conclusion 9. Bibliography

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Images

Figure 1. Carter, D. (2021). Deja View: Martin Parr and The Anonymous Project create an uncanny photographic double act. [online] Creative Boom. Available at: https://www.creativeboom.com/features/martin-parr/ [Accessed 2 Jan. 2022].

Figure 2. Carter, D. (2021). Deja View: Martin Parr and The Anonymous Project create an uncanny photographic double act. [online] Creative Boom. Available at: https://www.creativeboom.com/features/martin-parr/ [Accessed 2 Jan. 2022].

Figure 3. The Woman and the Giant (2014). The New York Times. [online] Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/13/arts/design/diane-arbus-recorded-a-bronx-familys-unsettling-dynamic.html [Accessed 2 Feb. 2022].

Figure 4. White, R. (2021). Rosie Marks is Vivian Maier for the iPhone age. [online] I-d. Available at: https://i-d.vice.com/en_uk/article/y3gxgw/rosie-marks-iphone-street-photoraphy-book-dobedo [Accessed 2 Feb. 2022].

Figure 5. White, R. (2021). Rosie Marks is Vivian Maier for the iPhone age. [online] I-d. Available at: https://i-d.vice.com/en_uk/article/y3gxgw/rosie-marks-iphone-street-photoraphy-book-dobedo [Accessed 2 Feb. 2022].

Figure 6. DoBeDo (2014). ’08.14-10.19’ BY ROSIE MARKS. [screenshot] DoBeDo. Available at: https://www.dobedo.co.uk/product/08-14-10-19-by-rosie-marks [Accessed 2 Feb. 2022].

Figure 7. Rosner, H. (2020). The Anxious Hands of New York’s Subway Riders in the Face of the Coronavirus. [online] The New Yorker. Available at: https://www. newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/the-anxious-hands-of-new-yorks-subway-riders-in-the-face-of-the-coronavirus [Accessed 2 Feb. 2022].

Acknowledgments

A dear thank you to all my close friends and family who have helped me, those who had to listen to me during long discussions, and everyone who has supported me along this process.

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Introduction

This dissertation aims to get a fresh understanding of what image culture means nowadays and its impact on western society.

Living in a post-modern world, mass media culture has been a major contributor to the overstimulation of the individual and his or her mind, forcing detachment from engaging with reality. Therefore, creating an under-stimulation and cooperation of the body. Exploring the contrast between being both a spectator/consumer and also a creator of images, I aim to challenge my artistic practice in the context of this overload of visual content. Therefore, I have been asking myself, if so many pictures exist already, is it necessary to create even more? Seeing how capitalism and improved technology have impacted our ways of communication, we will consequently explore our relation to images and their impact on us. With social media highly based on photography such as Instagram, we have shifted into a world controlled by creating representations of our lives— and ourselves by extension.

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Throughout this dissertation, I will first try to understand and analyze different theories and sum up the different ways that everyday life can be described. Beforehand, we can define everyday life as all activities and habits that constitute a person’s existence: sleeping, waking up in the morning, drinking coffee, going to the supermarket, etc. However, it can also be defined as mundane, which means lacking interest or excitement, or in other words, dull. In modern times, everyday life is a concept that has always existed but is simultaneously in constant change. It is massively impacted by questions of politics, social issues, economics, and most importantly, technology. And I will explore looking at ordinary life through photography and how you can revisit everyday life using that tool.

Secondly, the theme of image culture will be explored by looking into various theories: particularly those of Guy Debord and Susan Sontag, and their questioning around visual content and a post-war modernist world controlled by capitalism. Through the use of some case studies of several photographers such as Hannah La Follette Ryan, Martin Parr, and Rosie Marks, alongside personal examples, I would like to understand when they are contextualized and what they indicate and reflect about our current society.

Lastly, we will see how this overload of information and visual images can impact our way of seeing things as part of our everyday lives. It will also aim to look for new ways of looking and finding alternative ways of utilizing images through vernacular photography.

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Chapter 1 Everyday life and Photography

In our modern world, we are constantly interacting with pixels, images, and visual content: the question of what we can believe when seeing an image raised my attention. Can we blindly fall for everything we see in a picture? Most of the time, we consume images the way they are given to us without questioning their authenticity or provenance. But what do photographs tell us about our current society? In his book Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord raises awareness towards our society’s reaction to a world controlled by images and consequently by representation.

The book starts with this quote by Feuerbach: “Undoubtedly our era prefers the image to the thing, the copy to the original, the representation to the reality, appearance to being… for in these days illusion only is sacred, truth profane”.

(Debord, 1967, p.6) This quote introduces the notion of ‘the spectacle’ as expressed

by Debord. He underlines that the basis of the spectacle lies in the mass of the capitalist machine, building up a high contrast with the reality of life. When interrogating our relationship with photos, this led us to the conclusion that the viewpoint behind photography is double.

My research and my obsession for change and alternative possibilities motivated my intention to understand the motives of writers like Susan Sontag and Guy Debord and some photographers like Martin Parr and Rosie Marks seeking authenticity without hiding the truths of reality. In a world where an infinite load of images already exist, I started questioning if my practice and my images too had their place and were legitimate enough to have their platform. Creating so many photographs made me start thinking about reusing images, the importance of choosing them carefully, and paying attention to detail. I wanted to understand more deeply all the information hidden behind pictures.

More questions started to emerge: How powerful can a picture be? Can you reuse its form infinitely to change its original meaning?

Being both a photographer and a consumerist spectator, I was curious to understand the links behind photographic images taken from reality.

Is the need to consume and produce more content irresistible?

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In our modern world, we are constantly interacting with pixels, images, and visual content: the question of what we can believe when seeing an image raised my attention.

Can we blindly fall for everything we see in a picture? Most of the time, we consume images the way they are given to us without questioning their authenticity or provenance. But what do photographs tell us about our current society? In his book Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord raises awareness towards our society’s reaction to a world controlled by images and consequently by representation. The book starts with this quote by Feuerbach: “Undoubtedly our era prefers the image to the thing, the copy to the original, the representation to the reality, appearance to being… for in these days illusion only is sacred, truth profane” (Debord, 1967). This quote introduces the notion of ‘the spectacle’ as expressed by Debord. He underlines that the basis of the spectacle lies in the mass of the capitalist machine, building up a high contrast with the reality of life. When interrogating our relationship with photos, this led us to the conclusion that the viewpoint behind photography is double.

My research and my obsession for change and alternative possibilities motivated my intention to understand the motives of writers like Susan Sontag and Guy Debord and some photographers like Martin Parr and Rosie Marks seeking authenticity without hiding the truths of reality. In a world where an infinite load of images already exist, I started questioning if my practice and my images too had their place and were legitimate enough to have their platform. Creating so many photographs made me start thinking about reusing images, the importance of choosing them carefully, and paying attention to detail. I wanted to understand more deeply all the information hidden behind pictures. More questions started to emerge: How powerful can a picture be? Can you reuse its form infinitely to change its original meaning?

Being both a photographer and a consumerist spectator, I was curious to understand the links behind photographic images taken from reality. Is the need to consume and produce more content irresistible?

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Methodology

Diving into this theme, I started this project by understanding all the different processes behind photography on a larger scale and contrasting it with my way of practicing it. During this time, a lot had to do with practice-based research and reflecting on some old work. Soon, some recurring themes and insignificant things emerged: accidents from everyday life, a funny pole, a big pile of garbage that looks ridiculous, etc. I then re-examined a lot of theories relating to ordinary life with writers such as Guy Debord, Susan Sontag, Henri Lefebvre, and Ben Highmore and tried to understand them. Then, after studying those texts, I concluded that photography for me had become a tool to decontextualize certain things from everyday life and give them new importance. In a way, it helped to appreciate their existence and celebrate their presence, which can be overlooked sometimes. But after this first realization, another set of questions arose from the awareness of the immensity of images already existing. I was trying to understand my legitimacy to create more work in this world. Am I actively contributing to this abundance of information and visual representation of the world? This reflection grew bigger from trying to understand my obsession for recording what appeared to be meaningless moments or things. By learning more about the process of photography and what it truly entails, I saw in some photographers’ work some similarities in their way of practicing that made me want to push my understanding even further. In this mass media era, we can question the importance of photography and its singularity. However, I believe that a picture can be special even if there are so many that exist already. In this sense, it can be argued that this ‘special status’ we give it is relative in comparison to all the other images that already exist. And if there are more and more images that exist, the value of one image compared to the others perhaps decreases. All of these things observed deserved some explanation and understanding; this is why I decided to write this dissertation.

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Historical context

With the beginning of The Digital Era, which saw its origins between the 70s and the 90s, a radical change in the media took shape. Our modern society has shifted from a materialistic world with simpler ways of communicating to a digitalized era influenced by the omnipresence of technologies and computers. Indeed it not only changed our methods of communication, but it also changed our way of perceiving the world and its representation. This crucial time was also observed through the digitalization of cameras: going from analog to digital cameras was an important change. By digitizing and being able to take so many pictures, the possibilities seemed endless.

However, soon our links and relation to images changed quickly.

In a world where we can find anything in literally seconds by looking up information on Google, the importance of detail has gotten lost in time. Going through image evolution and its origins, we can observe that people’s relationship to images has changed over time.

In an article, Lee Shulman the founder of the Anonymous Project, explores the unique format of Kodachrome slides at the time: “It was just a way of sharing images – you’d get the images back, and you’d invite all your friends and your family over, and you’d do these evening projections. It was the first kind of home cinema – you’d watch them together. There’s a sharing experience

In this quote, he shows how social Kodachrome slideshows used to be, by celebrating moments captured by those cameras. It was an opportunity to relive those moments through gathering and looking at them all together. Kodachrome became fully part of Americans’ day-to-day lives post Second World War due to its price drop. Every sheet of Kodachrome held three layers of colors, making it an easier laboratory process than older color rolls of film. It has contributed to the popularization of color film.

Kodachrome had strong and vivid colors, adding another dimension to those events and moments captured on camera. This tool was soon part of many American families for decades before simpler and better films took over. Eventually, digital technology became omnipresent. With the democratization of point-and-shoot cameras, and creating cameras that are easy to manipulate, photography seemed accessible to even more people by adding more emphasis on capturing a moment rather than drawing a focus on the technical side. However, our ways of producing images have changed even more with digital cameras and even more recently with our smartphones.

For lots of people, our phones have replaced a camera’s use.

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Technically, there is no reason why someone would buy a film camera when they could access an easy-to-use and portable camera that their phones offer at the same time. Many photographers have also changed their ways of practicing by starting to record everything they can with their phone cameras. Some even have sometimes dropped their film cameras to switch to digital ones because of their easier and quicker process and more rapid outcomes. However, some photographers like Rosie Marks (her example is developed further down in the dissertation) have adjusted their ways of choosing their medium depending on the project. She, for example, has decided to choose to use older processes like 35mm for important events and uses her phone camera to record what she sees in her ordinary life.

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Everyday life

To understand the intricate link between creative practice (especially photography) and everyday life, we must take into account certain theories and concepts of how the banality of western life has been deeply impacted by modernism and capitalism. In Critique of The Everyday Life, Henri Lefebvre claimed that this banality is universally experienced regardless of social class or background. Rethinking the concept of banality could result in a social revolution, allowing us to gain a deeper understanding of people’s everyday lives (Henri Lefebvre, 1977).

In his work, Henri Lefebvre establishes a straightforward definition of everyday life: “The human world is not defined simply by history, by culture, by totality or society as a whole, or by ideological and political superstructures.

It is defined by this intermediate and mediating level: everyday life”.

(Henri Lefebvre, 1977) This argument demonstrates an abstract concept that everyday life revolves around: it is important to define the world not only by bigger concepts like politics and history but also by smaller scales.

Lefebvre’s global analysis indicates an immediacy to what we call everyday life, it is what we all know, and what we all see every single day. This includes having a daily schedule: sleeping, eating, working, having some leisure time.

However, this universal concept is somewhat hard to describe by its various components and different approaches experienced differently by everyone. Blanchot summarizes this in Everyday Speech with: “The mundane is often overlooked, and very easily negatively referred to by its lack of excitement and made out of essential tasks and interactions with objects we use daily” (Blanchot and Hanson, 1987).

Indeed, the experience of the ordinary is much impacted by social class, gender, status, etc. There are also many links to gender studies and psychological theories that have established how women in ancient times have been the most oppressed by the routine and banality of life, through being at home and taking care of the house and children. This is a phenomenon that has changed a lot since the 1970s with women having a lot more legal rights and a change of dynamics can be discerned despite a lot of stereotypes that are still reminiscent of those times which, as a result, are still deeply embedded in our patriarchal society.

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Everyday life and Photography

Photographing the banality of life is an opportunity to look at it differently and try giving it an alternative meaning to things you witness and interact with regularly. In a way, it is about engaging with what you already know instead of being passive and just observing it. In The Everyday, Documents of Contemporary Art by Stephen Johnstone, Michael Sheringham involves using a project as a way to relook at things in the ordinary, to interact with them more deeply: “Project often succeeds in making visible what is already there, not hidden but lying on the surface.”

(Johnstone, 2008, p.147) Using the tool of photography is an alternative way of looking at everyday life and giving it a second meaning through capturing a moment in time. There is only value to it if you photograph it.

How does photography hold such power in giving importance to a subject? In the same way that Martin Parr, Vivian Maier, or Rosie Marks, I take pictures of moments of things that seem banal and give them more importance by capturing them and therefore turning them into something ‘special’. In relation to the everyday, creativity becomes this door to another space where routine and banality are possible to escape.

Susan Sontag also mentions creative practice as being a tool to access a sort of fulfillment that everyday life can not always give us. She uses the example in photography of Diane Arbus’ way of working “Arbus took photographs to show something simpler—that there is another world.

The other world is to be found, as usual, inside this one”. (Sontag, 1978, p.35) Susan Sontag explains how creativity lies in front of us and is to be explored fully to find ideas to start making something. This is important to consider because by getting inspired by what is around us there is potential for ideas and creativity. It is about using all the potentiality laying in front of us as the basis of exploration.

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In the sphere that we commonly know as the everyday, the difference between each other’s lives is often defined by social status, class, and culture. As Ben Highmore mentions in his book Cultural Studies and Everyday Life, the use of ‘boredom’ is both to mark social distinctions and to diagnose cultural domination points as one unavoidable factor: everyday life which, like any other aspect of life, is distinguished by difference (Highmore, 2002). For example, similar to the studies of women, social classes can also be researched. The working classes tend to have a very different daily life contrasting the upper classes.

However, in these ordinary-appealing routines, there is something to find and to explore. In the ugly and mundane, you can discover the beautiful; in the non-exceptional, there is something exceptional. That is where creativity emerges. The mind is allowed to wander, suddenly creating space for the imagination. In her book, Kristin Ross expresses very clearly the impact everyday life has had on the arts during the 20th century: “But in that very triviality and baseness lay its seriousness, in the poverty and tedium of the routine lay the potential for creative energy”. (Ross, 1997, p.44) However, as this quote suggests, the day-to-day provides space and potential to be developed by creativity.

By using photography as a tool to look at things in an alternative way, I want to understand my relationship to images and this desire to create photographic content. The photographic gaze looks unconsciously for micro-moments, and unsaid things in what seems insignificant and ‘unusual’. Is the photographer’s goal to retain those little details that hide in scenes that appear to have no importance? Susan Sontag explores this concept in her book On Photography: “Photographs do more than redefine the stuff of ordinary experience (people, things, events, whatever we see— albeit differently, often inattentively—with natural vision) and add vast amounts of material that we never see at all. Reality as such is redefined“.

(Sontag, 1978, p.168) Photographing something part of our ordinary lives allows the subject being captured to use this space of being decontextualized to become something else.

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This dissertation will be exploring the links between photographing human beings and how that says some things about our current society.

It will focus primarily on the study of human behavior, body gestures, and what they communicate about the world we currently live in. We will see if photographing a subject, and isolating a part of a body can accentuate its social meaning. A simple part of a body or a piece of clothing holds symbolic meaning within our society. For example, clothes are symbolic and are a communicating tool expressing the person’s intentions. Unconsciously, clothes and how they are worn give information about style, identity, social status, gender, or group affiliation.

Intuitively, gestures and clothing from everyday life have always interested me as a photographic subject. My interest grew when coming across the book Martin Parr & The Anonymous Project and researching the term vernacular photography.

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Chapter 2 Image Culture

Photography plays a dominant role in portraying the world and has grown in importance into its omnipresence: it is used in every media (newspapers, online, articles). In the article Between Image and Reality: How We all Perceive the World, Sue Walsh explores the confrontation between imagination and reality (Walsh, 2015). Should we believe everything we see in a picture?

Instead, perhaps we should learn to challenge more what lies in front of our eyes and what we learn from the captions that describe it. In a world where we are all surrounded constantly by pixels and images, where do we stand? When reading through this piece of writing, some interesting issues were raised outlining our modern way of using social media, sharing visual content, and experiences that seem all so superficial. In this world of mass media, we have become obsessed with sharing intimate and personal moments with a sphere of people we usually do not even know and participating in this never-ending process. As a result, we have lost interest in the significance of reality: we have put so much emphasis on creating a representation of our lives and an extension of ourselves.

In the media, words are widely used to describe the world we currently live in. However, images have more immediacy to them, making them easier to relate to.

They are often used in complement to something written down. In a way, pictures are an extension of what our eyes can perceive. However, images can be used in a harmful way and can unconsciously control our minds. Because of their sense of authenticity, we see pictures as veracious when they are just a fragment of reality.

This is explained in the article in comparison to history: “On a larger scale, history functions as a filter that presents a single image — a limited and reductive version of our shared past.” (Walsh, 2015). Indeed, this can be applied to many instances. Without context, some images are difficult to read.

The person analyzing and looking at that image will automatically see what they want to see by connecting what they see to their own experience. Images truly impact our daily lives, and beliefs by showcasing and advertising new desires and aspirations. (Debord, 1967)

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In his book Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord highlights the fact that the media which he calls the ‘spectacle’ is monetizing our relationships and personal information. We have become pure consumption products for this capitalist society that is only trying to exploit our lives and sell them.

In consequence, our lives have become organized and dominated by this economy: “The more [the spectator] contemplates the less he lives; the more he accepts recognizing himself in the dominant images of need, the less he understands his own existence and desires.” (Debord, 1967, p.16) Guy Debord puts forward that as spectators, we are often presented with conflicting desires or messages as a result of an overwhelming amount of images. These confusing messages are buried by the rest of all the proliferating visual content. As spectators, he argues that we then start to confuse visibility and value. Additionally, we assume that if something is being covered by the media and talked about, it must have some importance to it. (Debord, 1967) This leads to overlooking the contradictions that our society and in extension the spectacle hold. We have become this society that is more connected than ever and at the same time more divided than ever. Researching and applying some concrete examples of pictures led to the conclusion that when photographing a subject, isolating it from its context and this image can intensify the object’s symbolic value. It projects you into reality while putting you into a different instance, thus it allows your mind to make links with various ideas. Overall, this means that the object captured has potential, and it gains the potentiality of representing an idea. This is where creativity begins.

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In On Photography, Susan Sontag explores the powerful dimension that images hold: “Social change is replaced by a change in images” (Sontag, 1978, p.194). Her argument proves that for change to happen in society, this has to be seen in images first. Visual content holds an important value that can not always be described by words. It can show and denounce something stronger and have more of an impact visually in our minds. Susan Sontag also explains that “something disturbs us more in photographed form than it does when we actually experience it” (Sontag, 1978, p.182). Images have an ability to resonate with our own experiences and positions, and similarly create questioning for the spectator. By challenging the viewer, the image seeks provocation.

This can be seen in different fields and important social questions: with human rights, discrimination, protests, etc. Photographs provide insight and access to more places and times around the world. Used along with words, or to illustrate a point, images contain even more significance, and become even more powerful by associating in the viewer’s mind the point with the visual image.

However, photographing the ordinary is not a new phenomenon.

Famous photographers such as Robert Frank, William Eggleston, and Henri Cartier Bresson have contributed a lot to the emerging style of practicing it.

Since the early 1960s, William Eggleston has been using color photography to portray cultural changes in Tennessee through everyday scenes. His work includes taking shots of petrol station signs, old cars parked in sunset light, and portraits of people walking down the street. His images are significant in their composition and colors, suggesting a big influence from Robert Frank’s approach to vernacular photography and Henri Cartier Bresson’s compositions. (Cunningham, 2022) The three of them have a similar method of practicing by drawing attention to familiar places, people, and things we interact with and see on a day-to-day basis. Henri Cartier-Bresson was a pioneer in candid photography, which is in its simplest form an unplanned shot, without disturbing the subject; the image is taken without being noticed by the subject. He believed photography was capturing a decisive moment. However, having a different approach to his subjects, Martin Parr can be associated with candid photography by adding another dimension.

He uses provoking shots with a critical viewpoint on consumerism accentuated by his important choice of vivid colors.

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Case study Martin Parr

Martin Parr is a successful photographer who has been taking pictures for as long as he can remember. He has also been part of Magnum Photos since 1994. Through his anthropological and satirical approach, he captures British social classes and the rest of the western world as well, using close-ups, macro lenses, and highly saturated colors. Which often results in either very positive emotional responses in the spectators or sadder ones. His images are at first stance quite striking by their hold of vivid colors. In the recently published book Martin Parr and the Anonymous Project, it is explained that he has worked hard for vernacular photography to be recognized and legitimized. To him, it is close to amateur photography - without any particular artistic intent - which is the major dimension of the medium.This book shows a playful visual conversation by using the format of double spreads to show both Martin Parr’s pictures and some from the Anonymous Project archive at the same time. The importance of this book lies in spotting the small details from everyday life which are representative of an era that many people will be able to relate to. The format of the book is interesting as it allows the spectator/viewer to compare both approaches which are always slightly different. This book becomes almost an archival piece portraying day-to-day life between the 50s and the 80s.

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Figure 1. Carter, D. (2021).

Figure 2. Carter, D. (2021).

Those two examples show how one subject can be photographed so differently. While they seem very similar at first glance, some differences can be perceived in the way of framing the image, and use of color. The fact that all the images in the book are in color, shows the globalized use of color photography, which allows the viewer to fully feel close to the photographs depicting a closer portrait of reality and what we see ourselves.

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In Martin Parr’s snapshot (Fig.1), he manipulates a wider lens which gives off a more general impression of the subjects with emphasis on the background as well as the subject themselves, putting the whole background on the same focus as the foreground. The other image’s framing on the right has more of an emphasis on the little girl in the foreground eating ice cream barefoot. Nevertheless, the impression the viewer gets from those two shots is similar; we feel a sensation of joy and silliness when looking at the kids with ice cream all over their faces. These photos portray childhood in the purest and most honest way.

Although Martin Parr’s work has been explored numerous times before, I am more interested in his methods of practicing. Through his ideas of composition and his pictures from the beach, there is often a flattening—almost pictorial—effect to them.

In this case, the fragment of the car, the horizon, and the beach are all in the same frame creating a dense impression and making it special.

This results in the brain having to find the depth within the image, whereas the other image is shot more traditionally. Parr’s image is taken from his book The Last Resort, which looks at capturing the public at the beach in New Brighton, next to Liverpool. The beach being at the heart of his work, he has even stated that he loves photographing people at the beach, as it seems like people are in their most authentic and honest way during their leisure time. With his enormous archive of work (around 50 000 images), he has opened up a new photographic field with vernacular photography which has been explored by other artists and photographers but also noncreatives who have just been taking pictures of their day-to-day lives to keep some memories close.

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The Anonymous Project is a collection of 800,000 slides bought randomly by Lee Shulman. They are almost an album of family moments, friends, and more specifically of people sitting in the kitchen, enjoying the sun at the beach, etc. When looking more closely into these archives, there is a certain eye and attention to detail that is not insignificant. There is a certain intention of capturing those moments with the use of a surprising composition. Shulman explains that the fact that they are slides make those moments even more important “For me, it’s the most honest type of photography – today you can recrop and everything, but you couldn’t do that at the time – you’d take your slide, and you’d get it back and it would be framed as you took it.” which gives certain importance to imperfection and beauty in using those images the way they are. (Shulman, 2021) But when going through the collection, this insight into strangers’ lives can only raise some questions of consent towards the captured and voyeurism from the viewer. This method of documentation is interesting however raises certain questions towards the consent of those being photographed, the same way Susan Sontag has raised this matter in the chapter “America, seen through Photographs, Darkly” (Sontag, 1978). The research method that is used here is mainly for personal reasons and based on the person behind the camera, in a sense it is not very objective, but very personal and yet so relatable…

It can be debatable to conclude that for it to be relatable to a bigger public, the approach has to be slightly voyeuristic to feel a sense of proximity with the subject being captured.

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Figure 3. The Woman and the Giant (2014).

On another note, Diane Arbus (Fig.3) has explored in a different approach certain marginalized groups by society: carnival performers, strippers, nudists, etc. When I studied her practice, I quickly started to question the consent of those she photographed. I wanted to interrogate how close Arbus was to her subjects to photograph them. Perhaps she was only taking pictures of them because she was obsessed with ‘abnormal’ people, who are not considered the norm by our arbitrary society.

Capturing her subjects frontally, she forces the viewer to look directly at them. As a result, when looking at the photograph, the spectator often feels intruding, which shows that the limit between the public and the private sphere can be very thin. I agree to some extent that her work has allowed a proper representation of marginalizedpeople, allowing them a platform to feel represented, and that her photographic method of not objectifying gives legitimacy to her practice.

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Chapter 3 New ways of seeing

In this world where images are dominant and controlling, alternative ways of exploring images and new ways of seeing can be envisaged to understand how image culture can evolve, and perhaps individual involvement can help it change. To relate photography to everyday life allows the mind and the individual to rethink what he commonly sees. It is the process of not overlooking life and things that we observe daily and paying more attention to detail which can be done on a small to larger scale. In his book, How to see, George Nelson creates an elaborate way of looking at various things. He encourages the reader to start from right outside your doorstep (the streets, people, public transportation, etc.) to some more abstract things that require a bit more imagination (Nelson, Stein, and Bierut, 2017). This includes giving meaning to objects such as shapes and geometry. Literacy is a concept that can be advanced by the ability to look at those objects and understand how they can be turned into words, and subsequently into ideas.

Nelson puts forward that everything we observe in urban life was not just made to be aesthetically pleasing but always had a predefined idea behind it. He also argues that the higher awareness you have about every day and the ability to explore beyond your knowledge allows your consciousness to recognize what is abnormal. This is summarized with: “awareness, when awakened, has a tendency to spread and expand” (Nelson, Stein, and Bierut, 2017).

I agree to an extent that when starting to open your mind about something, suddenly you begin to notice it a lot more. It is almost as if a door has been opened; the extension of those thoughts begins to grow even bigger.

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Georges Perec explores this concept in his book “An attempt at exhausting a place in Paris’’ (Georges Perec and Lowenthal, 2010), where he spends three days sitting in a café in Saint-Sulpice observing and writing down everything he sees from the little window where he is sitting down.

His narrative depicts time and space fragments of Saint-Sulpice, which are all stitched together by his representation of reality, where every single detail captures a poetic and beautiful signification. Perec was fascinated by the ordinary, by the things that escape our notice but are still important, and hold a major part in our lives. This is what he called ‘infraordinary’. By using his creative practice, Perec can switch the focus from the big events and headlines to encourage people to question and rediscover space, time, and poetry in their everyday lives. By using this way of noticing things, he analyzed every little detail he could see from his seat and started seeing things he would have never seen in any other situation. This example relates to looking back at the mundane and finding beauty and poetry in things that we do every day when our brains are just stuck within our routine.

When thinking about images in our society and what it depicts, I instantly started thinking about ‘vernacular photography’. Depending on the MOMA’s definition of what vernacular photography means, it is described as a contrast to fine-art photography and often used by non-photographers for a wide range of purposes (such as for personal matters, scientific, commercial, etc.). Often, random snapshots capturing everyday life and subjects are considered to be vernacular photography. In the interview at the beginning of the book, Martin Parr and the Anonymous Project, Martin Parr refers to it by adding: “I love the principle and the spirit which vernacular photography embodies. What is interesting to me, is the relationship between the subject and the person behind the camera. The photographer executes a pure act of photography, without any preconceived idea” (Parr, 2021). I agree that this concept can be seen and conveyed through snapshots of everyday life, which are sometimes a depiction of the small anecdotes of everyday life and brings them alive. It provides and allows the photographer to feel closer to its subject by trying to capture them in their most honest state. It is about capturing in a way that does not try to sur-represent the subject and trying to stay the most truthful.

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Case study Rosie Marks

This piece of work, untitled ’08.14-10.19’ is a photo book made

by Rosie Marks taken over five years between 2014 and 2019. This publication presents a collection of pictures of random strangers Rosie has taken with her phone’s camera. Rosie Marks raises some interesting questions, depicting the world she sees around herself in a way she feels is the most authentic to those concerned.

Figure 4. White, R. (2021).

Figure 5. White, R. (2021).

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For this project, she decided to choose a selection of images that were all taken with her phone camera as her main way of photographing what she saw around her. “With her imagery, Rosie manages to capture oddities in everyday scenarios that could otherwise easily be overlooked.”

(White, 2021) Her images are what everyone can relate to, weird scenes, part of urban social life that we most certainly all experience in some way. It seems as if the use of the iPhone gives off a sense of immediacy to her work, which makes it very accessible, and free of any overthinking with the subjects she is photographing. The format of the book is representative of an overloaded world of images, it is made of 1000 snapshots which can easily feel overwhelming. However, the feeling of turning the pages endlessly thirsty to see the next one is similar to the one can get when scrolling endlessly on social media or a browser looking for something that might satisfy them finally. Her pictures allow us a glimpse of people at their most unguarded, so in a way in their most authentic state and behavior.

However, when looking back at her method of exploiting subjects drawn from ordinary moments, the thought of consent comes to mind: “where is the line drawn between voyeurism and observation?”. These people have become a source of inspiration and ideas for our pictures without any explicit consent from them.

Some contradiction exists in the photographer, trying to depict a reality that does not exist.

An image is only just a fragment of a moment; an experience, a person.

It is a reduction of reality. These images can transmit strong ideas by taking pictures of small details.

Taking pictures of those subjects is a tool to bring the graphic detail out of them, giving a perspective on them.

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In her work, Rosie Marks succeeds to interrogate and picture the way she sees the world surrounding her. Although usually her work is based on film photography, this selection of photos shows a variety of subjects from body gestures, ordinary moments, a lot of different compositions, and many textures. In her book, she manages to capture the absurdity of some moments stolen from strangers’ everyday lives. Those moments, often disregarded and easily overlooked, take some humor when taken out of their context. The image on the left reflects the theory advanced by Susan Sontag that our era “prefers the image to the thing, the copy to the original, the representation to the reality, appearance to being”. (Sontag, 1978, p.164) The phone used as a camera that she is holding is representative of a tool that is participating in the endless creation of new images. With the arrival of digital phones and cameras inside phones, our ability to capture everything we see around us is infinite. Once again, our society is more interested in the representation of our life than the reality of it. This woman sitting on a plane is taking a picture of her hand which has a ring on it and looks very happy.

When looking at it, we feel a sense of joy but also we can not hold ourselves from the lack of modesty from this woman who wants to share this moment with so many people (and unconsciously all the people around her, not to mention the viewers of this image). This snapshot suggests, and we can only imagine that she is sending this image to her peers to share the big news.

The second image has more humor to it because it captures this man well dressed in a nice suit, and wearing sunglasses inside in what seems like it could be at the gym. He is just waiting patiently all while on his roller skates.

I enjoy those two images because they seem both absurd and funny and could be seen and taken by anyone. However, the photographer’s eye seems sensitive to small details, and moments like this show a particular sensitivity to oddities in everyday life scenes. Vernacular photography seems like a way of photographing ordinary scenarios which allows the photographer to avoid overthinking before taking a picture and trying to portray the scene the way it is directly seen by allowing the subject to fully express themselves without any judgment.

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Figure 6. DoBeDo (2014).

When taking a picture of a stranger, by focusing on someone’s gesture, it accentuates the dimension of the ‘decisive moment’, a notion introduced by Henri Cartier-Bresson. (Cartier-Bresson, 1952) To capture detail from someone, and the instance of the person by the gesture. The result will necessarily be relatable to the viewer, as there is some universality to how people behave in society and how they express themselves through their bodies. Hannah La Follette Ryan explains this notion in this statement: “I’ve learned how you can, with, luck; anticipate a strong picture by closely observing body language.” (La Follette Ryan, 2020)

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After comparing the two different case studies, between Martin Parr and Rosie Mark’s work it is easy to recognize some similarities.

The two photographers show an interest in portraying the society surrounding them, not only certain social classes or a specific group of people by trying to stay true to their subjects. However, it can be discerned that their two approaches are quite different. Rosie Marks, to me, seems to have a younger approach to the subjects she takes and has a better way of portraying the proximity between herself and the things she is taking pictures of. I think I relate to Rosie Mark’s work more because there is more authenticity to it, which seems closer to my sensibility and can be explained by the fact that she is also a woman. By trying to capture the moment in all its authenticity, there is an immediacy to her work that is full of freshness that can be felt by the lack of overthinking when taking the pictures.

Images on their own already hold so much meaning by the amount of information they contain. They are made of thousands of pixels that depict things such as color, texture, and different depths. Each image is unique by its composition, and its moment is taken in time. However, the same way a method can be applied to look at things surrounding us differently can be applied in a similar approach to a single photo.

Since a photo in itself already communicates a lot, by cropping and editing it, a whole new world opens up.

By doing so, you enter another depth of engaging with a visual image.

By cropping the image the way you wish, you can either enhance the effect looked for, or isolate a subject by taking away some of the backgrounds leaving less distraction for the eye to focus on. Therefore, the gaze is oriented directly towards the subject in question.

My thinking and questioning where I stand in this overload of images were triggered by realizing that everyone takes so many pictures every day. I was wondering how my approach was different from most people’s. And if there was a possibility of creating alternative ways of using images, in order not to produce even more.

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Figure 7. Rosner, H. (2020).

I tried to creatively reuse an image I studied in the past by Hannah La Follette Ryan. When deconstructing a picture the same way as seen above, we get to analyze the image differently and our eye is inclined to pay more attention to detail rather than the overall impression of the image. An image is an association of a lot of things at the same time. It is interesting to see how the power of an image can be subverted through the action of just cropping it, and organizing it differently. By playing with it, we can see that its meaning can take endless forms. How many times can a single picture be reused to reveal new meanings? In this example, it is not simply about the hands and their meaning anymore, they are turned into abstract figures who take the shape of aliens. The mind automatically tries to look to associate and find small details enhanced by the squares on the left.

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On another note, the theme and the methods explored in this dissertation in its concept made me think about Black Vernacular.

Nevertheless, it is important to distinguish those two things which do not have the same implication at all. Black vernacular, or AAVE (which stands for African American Vernacular English), is a language that emerged in the United States and Canada from the slavery history of Africans as early as the 17th century. For the oppressed at that time to counteract the colonizers, who had forbidden them to speak their African languages, hindering their ability to prepare for escape and counter-attack, they invented their language: a blend of English and African languages wrapped in codes. However, this being a very intricate subject, it is not in my hands to develop now, but it deserves more attention and more understanding in the future. But I recognize in the two approaches a similarity in the will to reappropriate something that already exists (in this case, language or images), and turn it into something else, to similar uses, but more personal ones. Although not having the same implication, images may be reused and appropriated by some. Can pictures, the same way as AAVE, find their alternative language to what already exists and be recognized? In a way, this has been explored by a number of artists reusing images by giving them a second life in a different context through collaging. They have reappropriated the images to use them in their own way and linked them with other ones. By using narrative through their first interpretation, they become something else as a whole.

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Conclusion

Visual culture plays a role in portraying the modern world we live in today in the same way it impacts things we see daily, even if unconsciously. Being aware of this context is a start to react to this post-modern era, heavily controlled by capitalism. Through this dissertation, we have seen that images, although at first sight might seem veracious, are only a representation, which is often only a fragment of reality. In this context of digitalization, our use of cameras has changed over time, inclining towards more digital mediums. This contributes to the oversaturation of visual content with creating more content indefinitely. Photographing the ordinary might seem anecdotal; however, the use of vernacular photography demonstrates to be the best way to portray a world without embellishing it. It seeks authenticity by aiming to represent the subject in its truest form and finding beauty in what seems to be ordinary. Capturing people’s gestures says a lot about the person photographed, adding a strong dimension to the moment of the ‘click’ of the shutter. Using photography as a tool to envision what the person behind the camera sees can cause some debate towards the consent of the subject photographed. There is always a voyeuristic aspect to photography, by trying to capture intimacy in someone. Rosie Mark’s work depicts people being in their most authentic state as well as exploring the limits between the public and the private sphere.

Her approach is more spontaneous and uncanny, spotting little details in people or the world she depicts with a good sense of humor. I relate to Mark’s work the best because there is a sense of proximity that is communicated flicking through her images and book that cannot necessarily be conveyed through Martin Parr’s work.

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This study has shown me that it can be hard to take a step back from this abundance of information. Nevertheless, it is possible to rethink ways of seeing ordinary life to emphasize the small things we overlook. Taking time to acknowledge it, and opening our minds to new things can broaden our awareness. My aim for this piece of writing was to outline the intricacy of images and their power on us in depicting everyday life. I wanted for the reader to examine his or her relation to visual content, and to open some questions. It is up to everyone to rethink and understand the world we live in. Some people use newspapers or books to understand the current world. Others, for instance, photographers have to use still images to comprehend the world, and the quality of a picture usually depends on the photographer’s gaze. It is an invitation to develop a unique and poetic look that renews ways of perceiving the world. Even though techniques keep evolving, and images are multiplying, even more, someone who does not have a photographic gaze can practice vernacular photography without standing out. Cultivating vernacular photography is to find a unique manner of looking at our modern world with all its paradoxes, speed, and lines from the ordinary that are a lot slower. Beauty and poetry can take simpler forms, less sensational, which deserve to be explored and connected with reality more authentically.

To conclude, this dissertation has allowed me to rethink my relation to my subjects when photographing, especially people. I often take pictures of people from the back, and I want to explore capturing them frontally. After realization, I usually photograph people from the back or without them looking at me directly. To take a step further in my approach, I need to confront my relation to this question.

By writing this dissertation I developed a progression in my thinking and my writing along the way, which added an interesting dynamic to it. Overall, I have realized that I probably chose to explore and push this subject to move on to the next step in my process.

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