One evening I found myself trying to explain a picture I had taken (incidentally I say this in the context that these things are often quite emotive, particularly with this particular one having been the (sole) result of many hours wandering and a sizable chunk of time editing), until it occurred to that the picture really needed no explanation: it was never intended to tell a story as such, just to reflect a moment that I found pleasing and having the additional benefit of having been framed in the viewfinder to the degree it was also, technically, a decent image. It certainly did not need defending, so then why was I so at pains to do so? This lead me to thinking of an exhibition I visited a year ago, where the photographs were beautiful (in my opinion) yet a lengthy text accompanying each one somehow managed to distract from the beauty I saw.
This lead me to something Ansel Admas said: “We all write too much, speak too much, preach too much. It would be better if we just said what we have to say in photography. After all, we are all photographers; if our work has “what it takes” it will not need the embalming of words to perpetuate it. ..I believe that we do not need any justification in type for our adventures in silver. Presumably we are all afraid of something. I am probably afraid that some spectator will not understand my photography–therefore I proceed to make it really less understandable by writing defensively about it.” Ansel Adams
Apart from rare examples to the contrary, photography is a form of communication. But why do we assume that with this communicative power there is necessarily a story to be told? Why indeed do we spend so much time concluding (and in the case of several famous photographs–wrongly concluding) what that story may be? Of course there is no doubt that photographs are used to support a written message in a way that few other expressions could. A photograph is great at communicating reality, much more so than communicating a story. So I say to you here, let your work speak for itself and me, I’m going to ease off with the explanations.
