Fictional sources: justification for use as a source of investigation.

The following is from my MA (by research) thesis (as is Why Polaroid?)

Fictional sources: justification for use as a source of investigation.

The imbrications of a theoretical discussion in regard to the integral Polaroid and fictional narrative (celluloid and page) are not an abdication of responsibility to the main focus of the text. For, though a tension arises with the use of fictive sources in pursuit of the concrete – the manifestation of imagination as a location to examine the real - the stories we tell about ourselves do shed light on ourselves, reflect ourselves, both collectively and individually.

Sabine Chalvon-Demersay’s A thousand screenplays: the French imagination in a time of crisis (1999) investigates the manner in which screenplays submitted to a public television station in 1991 – solicited through a competition to find new writing talent - shed light on contemporaneous societal concerns. In Oliver Reynolds collection of poetry Skervington’s Daughter (1985), each poem within the second section (the main text is divided into three discrete parts) takes for its title a term or phrase that is directly related to the photographic; indeed, each poem concerns itself with photography specifically – be it the process, the photograph, the subject, or as metaphor - and in this fashion also contributes to a narrative, a discourse, of photography. Thus, such an approach is well established. Hardt, in a paper delivered at the Visual Rhetoric Conference at Indiana states:

Readings about photography in the writings of the day constitutes an exploration of popular knowledge about visual practices… a critical reading of the fictional accounts of photographic practices in everyday life provides an opportunity for gauging the importance of visual representations of the social environment. It also offers a unique perspective on a cultural history of photography as constituted by the literary narrative, or by what is being said about photography – not by theorists or historians of the medium – but by those whose concrete experiences with photography have entered the cultural discourse through literature. (2001)

Clive Scott points out in his introduction to The Spoken Image: Photography & Language (1999), defending his use of fiction as a source material for a discussion on photography that: ‘… our assessment of photography, and in particular our ways of talking about it, are often generated by literature.’ (Scott. 1999, p.12). Indeed, he goes on to state that Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag and Walter Benjamin – whom he regards as three of the most well known photographic theorists – are all essentially ‘literary critics in style.’ (1999, p.12). Pierre Bourdieu, in Photography: A Middle-brow Art (1990) also quotes from literature: enlisting Proust on pages 74, 75 and 144. And in the introductory text to Legacy Of Light: 205 Polaroid Photographs by 58 distinguished photographers Peter Schjeldahl writes of the developing Polaroid image:

… the faintly suspenseful long moment of watching the image appear, [is] a definitively contemporary experience of time that, if Proust were alive, would be good for some dozens of pages of the most angelic prose. (1987, p. 9)

Another reason for seeking out articulations of one medium (in this case the integral Polaroid) within the structures of another (film, fiction, the internet) is that it permits new insights on the intended, primary subject (as noted earlier). Philip Dubois observes:

I think we have never been in a better position to approach a given visual medium than by imaging it in light of another, through another, by another, or like another. Such an oblique, off-center vision can frequently offer a better opening onto what lies at the heart of the system…The thing is to practise this kind of oblique, sideways approach deliberately. We might begin with this simple idea: that the best lens on photography can be found outside photography. (Quoted in Green, 2006, p.20).

Dubois here is discussing the possibilities of approaching photography, and what might be said of it, through the medium of film: ‘Thus to grasp something of photography we must enter through the door of cinema…’ (Green, 2006, p.20). Indeed, in parenthesis, he equates common qualities of film and photography through an association between the film-still and the photogramme. And of course such an approach is reciprocal: Dubois uses the phrase ‘vice versa’; Green – from whose essay the quotes from Dubois are taken - ‘dialectic’. Indeed, Clive Scott makes this point also (1999, pp.12-13).

And of course, to turn to the realm of fiction specifically, the manner in which photography is presented inform – or at least present - elements apparent in theory, indeed, could be taken as theoretical texts themselves (accentuating the literary style of Barthes perhaps…). In Louise Welsh’s The Cutting Room (2003), a thriller set in contemporary Scotland, we find the following:

A long time ago these people had moved and talked and laughed. The photographer had pressed the button, the shutter had clicked, their shadows captured on film. Forever young, debauched and laughing. What had she said, the woman at the front of the photograph? I could feel her energy. The instant the photograph was taken she had leap to her feet and… If I could only look with the right eyes I would see her move. Her tiny frame would stand, sashay across the room, turn to me and… (2003, p.23)

Rilke, the main character within the novel and from whose perspective the narrative unfolds, conveys here notions of the photograph in a manner similar to Barthes in Camera Lucida (1993): the tension between the co-existence of an event in the past and its location in the present through the photograph, the fragmentation of time: ‘He is dead and he is going to die…’ (1993, p.95), the desire to know what came afterwards - which, incidentally, is the concern of the main narrative (See also, Scott 1999, p. 34): – and, indeed, the very construction of narratives that imagine this afterwards (whatever it may be): ‘It is possible that Ernest is still alive today: but where? how? What a novel! (Barthes, 1993, p.83). To provide a demarcation, then, between the literary and the theoretical in respect to the photographic is not a simple endeavour. Even the most seemingly banal statement testifies to a theory of the photographic. What can be hypothesised, is hypothesised, in this single sentence from a Jorge Luis Borges story for instance: ‘Every so many years, he went to England to visit - judging by the photographs he showed us - a sundial and some oak trees.’ ? (Borges, 1993, p8)

 Principally, the above sketches for an interrogation of integral Polaroid at the narrative level (the what): '... the fictive space and time in which the film operates, the assumed universe in which the narrative takes place’ ('Stam, Burgoyne, Flitterman-Lewis, 1992, p.38). However, the manner of narration (the how) is always present (no matter how suspended by the viewer). It intrudes: for how a thing is shown is as important as the thing itself. Catherine Grant, for instance, seeks to extend the importance of an understanding of the function of the photographic image – and thus its centrality - in film, through an interrogation of the relationship between the single image and notions of the indexical on the one hand, and the use of multiple images and the iconic on the other.[1] Arguing for a focus on the levels of the narrative and narration she states:

In ways that generally go unacknowledged by commentators, photographs make regular and salient on-screen appearances: they are important devices in film-narration; they are frequently deferred to as the central object of the frame; and they are even “imitated” by films thorough the use of freeze-frames and other aesthetic contrivances. (2003, p. 64).

The opening to Christopher Nolan’s film Memento (2000) provides a startling example of the how and the why in regard to the integral Polaroid. During the opening credits the frame is taken up with an integral Polaroid held by Leonard, of which only the hand is visible (in this regard the film-camera adopts a subjective point of view). The image shows the back of the head and torso of Teddy. Over this are presented the credits, including the title of the film (FIG. 1.). The integral Polaroid is occasionally shaken (contributing to the mistaken belief that such an endeavour lessens the time the image takes to develop), the sound of which is prominent. During this shot the image gradually fades away until Leonard reinserts the integral Polaroid back into the camera from which it has been ejected. Thus, not only does this scene explicitly highlight the manner of exposure and development of the integral Polaroid - but in reverse - it also pre-figures the film’s central narrative structure as whole. Nolan says in the Anatomy of a Scene extra on the three DVD release:

The thing about the title sequence is it gives you a couple of minutes of film where you can really take your time to set something up, which in this case is in real time watching a Polaroid undevelop and fade into nothing, which then leads you into this whole reverse action [of the film]. (2004)

(FIG.1).

The integral Polaroid makes one other such ‘salient’ appearance: as the integral Polaroid photograph of Jimmy, whom Leonard has just killed (chapter 13) develops, the film transposes from monochrome to colour, unifying those sequences of the film which progress sequentially and are presented in monochrome with the main narrative, occurring in reverse and presented in colour (FIGS. 2, 3.).

(FIGS 2, 3).

These two scenes then, are illustrative at both the level of narration and narrative. While navigating between these two levels I will seek to take what is presented in the first instance as always factual, and thereby seek to explicate the unambiguous - yet rarely articulated – manifestations of the integral Polaroid photograph. Indeed, Doane points out that the photograph is often accorded a secondary status within film, ‘Safely ensconced within the image or narrative, photography is dealt with as an inferior discourse, the object of the films’ more knowing analysis.’ (2006, p.31). The integral Polaroid is accorded a further reduced roll: in Silverman’s (2006) discussion of James Coleman’s work Backround (1991-1994) for instance, though one of the stills he employs to illustrate his discussion (p.89) clearly shows an integral Polaroid being held (the dimensions indicate the film type to be Spectra/Image System), and even though the essay concerns notions of temporality, in which the integral Polaroid provides for a pivotal point between the transformation from the analogue to the digital (which will be touched upon again later, briefly), no specific mention of it is made. It is equated with photography in general by omission.

Such incongruities of use that present themselves - for instance, in the film Saw (Wan, 2004), in which an integral Polaroid has seemingly been effortlessly folded, or the film Intacto (Fresnadillo, 2001), in which a type 600 Polaroid is effortlessly ripped - will provide means of further clarification and investigation of the main concerns of the text, both theoretical and practical in nature; indeed, they have contributed to the outcomes of both.

The examination of the presentation of the integral photograph in other media also encompasses its remediation: the integral Polaroid in digital presentations, within the confines of a book, as well as other, increasingly abstracted, forms such as the graphic, or, indeed, the numerical data displayed on the reverse of the Image System/Spectra integral Polaroid alone. All are testament to the existence of the integral Polaroid photograph, be this a specific instance or more general manifestations. Indeed, the term ‘remediation’ itself indicates a broad concern; that the replacements of the specific photograph by its digitisation, indeed, the very digitisation of photography as a whole, constitutes a progressive endeavour. Berry (after Hayles) instead finds the term ‘intermediation’ more apt, arguing that it is ‘useful in its refusal to set up a narrative of linear progress.’ (2005). Such an articulation permits interrogation of what is new rather than merey acquiescent; additionally, it permits the continued use of old technologies, and as a means by which to interrogate, and formulate, the new.

1. A analogous point is also made by Anna Dezeuze in regards to the manner of depiction of, on the one hand, people, and on the other, individual, in film concerning the representation of Palestinians and Israelis respectively. (2007).

Bibliography.

Barthes, Roland (1993). Camera Lucida. Vintage. London.

Berry, Patrick (n.d.). Critical Remediations: Localising Eliza. Available online at: http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/11.3/topoi/prior-et-al/berry/remediations.htm [Accessed: 23/10/07].

Borges, Jorge Luis (1993). Ficciones. Every Man’s Library. London.

Bourdieu, Pierre (1990). Photography: A Middle-brow Art. Polity Press. Cambridge.

Chalvon-Demersay, Sabine (1999). A thousand screenplays: the French imagination in a time of crisis. University of Chicago Press.

Dezeuze, Anna (2007). Wall of Silence. Art Monthly. June 2007, pp, 1-4.

Doane, Mary Ann. Real Time: photography, film and temporalities of the image. In GREEN, DAVID, LOWRY, JOANNA (2006). Stillness and Time: Photography and the Moving Image. Photoforum. Brighton.

Fresnadillo, Juan Carlos.(Director). Intacto. (2001). DVD film (2002). Momentum Pictures.

Grant, Catherine.Still Moving Images: Photographs of the disappeared in films about the “Dirty war” in Argentina. In HUGES, ALEX, NOBEL, ANDREA (2003). Phototextualities: Intersections of Photography and Narrative. Chapt. 3. University of New Mexico Press. Albuquerque.

Green, David. Marking Time: photography, film and temporalities of the image. In GREEN, DAVID, LOWRY, JOANNA (2006). Stillness and Time: Photography and the Moving Image. Photoforum. Brighton.

Hardt, Hanno (2001). Multiple Exposures Constructing Photography in Short Fiction. Visual Rhetoric Conference at Indiana. 6-8 September, 2001. Located online at: http://skylined.org/hardt/text6.htm [Accessed: 12/12/05]

Nolan, Christopher. (Director). Memento. (2000). DVD three disc edition (2004). Pathe!

Reynolds, Oliver (1985). Skervington’s Daughter. Faber & Faber. London.

Schjeldahl, Peter. The Instant Age. In SULLIVAN, CONSTANCE ed. (1987). Legacy of Light: 205 Polaroid Photographs by 58 distinguished American Photographers. Alfred A. Knopf, inc. USA.

Scott, Clive (1999). The Spoken Image: Photography & Language. Reaktion Books. London.

Stam, Burgoyne, Flitterman-Lewis (1992). New vocabularies in film semiotics. Routledge. London.

Wan, James. (Director). Saw. (2004). DVD film (2005). Entertainment in Video.

Welsh, Louise (2003). The Cutting Room. Canongate. Edinburgh.