Great essay! I dabble in photography, though I mostly try to capture urban landscapes and still lifes. I am not much of a portraitist, but I do play with filters and exposure before taking the photograph, because what I am really trying to capture is the soul of an image, or the vibe, if you will. My photography is probably more expressionistic than realistic. I try to photograph what is already there, but also to express something I sense beneath the surface. And that is the question: am I capturing the soul of the image, or is the soul already there, waiting to be noticed?
Thanks for reading, Stefan. Interesting question. I’ve been getting into Deleuze recently, and I think one of his major ideas is that “reality” happens between frames, and that what we experience as now is a series of processing steps - something akin to experiential photographs. So if there’s anything like the soul of an image, it maybe can’t be rendered directly; it has to be inferred from snapshots either side (e.g. via memory and projection; photography and whatever the future tense equivalent of photography is [literature?]). I dig that idea, although I admit I don’t fully understand it yet.
Joe, I’m not going to bullshit you and pretend I’ve read Deleuze properly. I tried reading Anti-Oedipus almost ten years ago and gave up. Still, I find the idea you shared interesting, especially because it resonates with something Alan Moore once said about storytelling in comics: that most of the story actually happens between the images, in the blank space between panels. I think the same applies to film, and especially to literature. To me, what separates a real writer from somebody merely arranging words is trust in the reader. A good writer gives just enough information for the reader to bridge the gap themselves. The art is not in overexplaining, but in creating the conditions for meaning to emerge inside another person’s mind. That’s how I approach storytelling. Especially when I work with multimedia, I’m not merely trying to create a vibe or atmosphere. I’m trying to construct something that leaves space for the reader to enter it and pick up on things I may not have consciously intended. What they find there ultimately belongs to them, not to me. I think photography works the same way. I love photography, but what fascinates me is rarely the image itself, no matter how beautiful it is. It’s what the image implies. Recently, I’ve been looking at old photographs of skateboard kids around the Dogtown scene in the 1970s, and what captures me is not simply the composition or the aesthetics. I find myself wondering what kind of lives those kids lived, what they feared, what they dreamed about, what happened to them after the photograph was taken.
I couldn't agree more. The art that speaks to me the most is the kind that forces you to engage actively, to interpret rather than merely consume. That's a great point about comic books: they're effectively films stripped of all but the most important frames - something in between a photograph and a movie. I dig what you're saying about old photographs, too. There's beauty and horror in every picture. A moment in time frozen forever, while the subjects wither and die. I find photos fascinating from a narratological perspective, as well. Like, how is it even possible to derive meaning from one frame? A comic with one panel can work because the dialogue is a secondary narrative - meaning can be expressed two ways in that medium. But photos have the image and nothing else (ignoring the fact that you could, in theory, take a picture of a page of text). I'm not sure what the literary equivalent would be?
Great essay! I dabble in photography, though I mostly try to capture urban landscapes and still lifes. I am not much of a portraitist, but I do play with filters and exposure before taking the photograph, because what I am really trying to capture is the soul of an image, or the vibe, if you will. My photography is probably more expressionistic than realistic. I try to photograph what is already there, but also to express something I sense beneath the surface. And that is the question: am I capturing the soul of the image, or is the soul already there, waiting to be noticed?
Thanks for reading, Stefan. Interesting question. I’ve been getting into Deleuze recently, and I think one of his major ideas is that “reality” happens between frames, and that what we experience as now is a series of processing steps - something akin to experiential photographs. So if there’s anything like the soul of an image, it maybe can’t be rendered directly; it has to be inferred from snapshots either side (e.g. via memory and projection; photography and whatever the future tense equivalent of photography is [literature?]). I dig that idea, although I admit I don’t fully understand it yet.
Joe, I’m not going to bullshit you and pretend I’ve read Deleuze properly. I tried reading Anti-Oedipus almost ten years ago and gave up. Still, I find the idea you shared interesting, especially because it resonates with something Alan Moore once said about storytelling in comics: that most of the story actually happens between the images, in the blank space between panels. I think the same applies to film, and especially to literature. To me, what separates a real writer from somebody merely arranging words is trust in the reader. A good writer gives just enough information for the reader to bridge the gap themselves. The art is not in overexplaining, but in creating the conditions for meaning to emerge inside another person’s mind. That’s how I approach storytelling. Especially when I work with multimedia, I’m not merely trying to create a vibe or atmosphere. I’m trying to construct something that leaves space for the reader to enter it and pick up on things I may not have consciously intended. What they find there ultimately belongs to them, not to me. I think photography works the same way. I love photography, but what fascinates me is rarely the image itself, no matter how beautiful it is. It’s what the image implies. Recently, I’ve been looking at old photographs of skateboard kids around the Dogtown scene in the 1970s, and what captures me is not simply the composition or the aesthetics. I find myself wondering what kind of lives those kids lived, what they feared, what they dreamed about, what happened to them after the photograph was taken.
I couldn't agree more. The art that speaks to me the most is the kind that forces you to engage actively, to interpret rather than merely consume. That's a great point about comic books: they're effectively films stripped of all but the most important frames - something in between a photograph and a movie. I dig what you're saying about old photographs, too. There's beauty and horror in every picture. A moment in time frozen forever, while the subjects wither and die. I find photos fascinating from a narratological perspective, as well. Like, how is it even possible to derive meaning from one frame? A comic with one panel can work because the dialogue is a secondary narrative - meaning can be expressed two ways in that medium. But photos have the image and nothing else (ignoring the fact that you could, in theory, take a picture of a page of text). I'm not sure what the literary equivalent would be?