Photo #6

Late 1980s, this is at ‘The Stone House’ out east at Montauk, an early photo after I decided to get into photography. Can’t recall the girl’s name; she must be in her 50s now. I hope life has gone well for her. 

In this book I’m working on I’m trying to define photography rather than just describe it. Part of its value, of course, is the nostalgia factor, but ‘nostalgia’ is such a weak word. I don’t think there is a word in English that works in this case: ‘nostalgia’ raised to an exponential degree.

Speaking of words, I think once in a while I’ll use an excerpt from the book here, although without the photo layout it’s going lose pizzazz. (I’m changing the paragraphing to blog-style.) Here you go:

The S-Word

   ‘A picture is worth a thousand words.’ Since the excerpt you just read [it was from Zero] is approximately a thousand words, does that mean it had an impact equal to an image you may have looked at?  

But hold on. 

Notwithstanding how many times in your life you’ve repeated it, what does that old saying even mean, if anything?  For me, it’s utter nonsense. Like saying a Ferrari hubcap is worth a thousand pomegranates. But I digress!       

There is another word whose meaning I’m going to stretch a bit for our purposes: Subtext. ‘Subtext’ is supposed to refer to the underlying meaning of the written or spoken word. Photographs, or at least ‘good’ ones, have subtext too, especially when they are combined with written words and other images. (‘Subtext’ is the real meaning of a piece of communication. As in saying ‘no’ but saying it in a way that means ‘Yes.’ That a word can reverse its own meaning is how important subtext is!)

 And there are ways of accentuating and sort of slyly guiding subtext. Do you recall the first four images in this book, the ones before the title page? If not, please riffle back and give them a glance [you’ve seen these so I am changing them here]…

Back? An RV plastered with photo imagery, right? Two full pagers, then an interior of the RV, even bigger, a fold out. (Yes, size matters!) The fourth is another full pager, of a grey-bearded old bastard standing between the same image-laden RV and a campfire.  As I hope you realize, that’s me. (I am of course imagining all this, meaning the layout, since I’m still just thinking about it.) 

 Assuming you didn’t know anything about me before picking up this book (which I have to assume as I sweat over it), what does this imagery tell you? What’s the subtext? 

Added this one at the last minute. I like the subtext, the way you tell some things about the people just from their hanging legs .

 Well, whatever’s going on here, it definitely is photo-driven! Right? Look at the RV interior image. Someone’s knee (mine) under a skeleton of some sort (a long-dead animal hovers over me) and across from what looks like The Godfather, Part Two playing on a MacBook (a story that glamorizes psychopaths), but mostly it’s photographic images everywhere, even on the overhead… Jesus, does the old fart live there? (There’s some other subtext in that pic, if you look closely. And the image of my dog looking at that blue copy of the Bible with Jordan Petersen hovering over it? Whoa! That one makes me dizzy.)

Are you starting to get the idea about subtext? Did the distinctive presentation of the ‘insert’ double facing pages confuse you? (I hope not!) A different question: Is this stuff so obvious that you’re thinking I’m wasting both our times with it?

I fear we won’t really know until the end. 

Allan

I probably should have used the photos referred to but since you have already seen them… sorry…