Roland Barthes - 'Image Music Text'

Why is text so important to the image? Does it give us added information that we don’t get just from the image? Does it Show things that we cannot see? Or does it distract us from working out the image ourselves?

In Barthes ‘Image,Music Text’, he tells us that...

“Naturally, even from the perspective of a purely immanent analysis, the structure of the photograph is not an isolated structure; it is in communication with at least one other structure, namelt the text – title, caption or article.” Page 16

Here he is mainly talking about press photography or work in a newspaper but this also responds to artistic photography.   

He then goes on to talk about ‘connotation procedures’ which is the imposition of second meaning in the photographic message. It is realised that there are different levels of production of the photograph, for example, choice, different treatment, framing layout. 

He then talks about the connection between ‘Text and image.’

This speaks about how text is designed to ‘quicken’ our understanding of the image, the words help the image.

Barthes, R., & Heath, S. (1977). Image, music, text. New York, Hill and Wang. P 15, 16, 20, 25

  

Hamish Fulton

Hamish Fulton’s work is made from walking journeys and documenting his experiences through journals and notes. These private experiences that are then made public, develop potential for the viewer to understand a wider meaning of the journey through the landscape.

 It primarily consists of walking through the countryside all over the world, sometimes in places far away from industrial centres eg, Nepal, India, Bolivia, Peru and Alaska.

The physical action of actually walking thought these locations makes Fulton experience the nature first hand, there and then in that moment, and got himself, not through the medium of someone else.

Because he has been photographing since the early 70’s, his personal of perceptions of nature and the countryside, which allows the public to experience this with him.

His thoughts, observations and emotions which he notes down in journals and notebook which combines his work since the 80’s, which help document his images because they reflect his experiences of his walks in a poetic way.

This appeals to the reader’s imagination and allows us to experience what cannot be captured or expressed visually.

His work combines colour and black and white, in a way quite unique because when pre-visualising your work, you decide what format would work best, but he combines the two to get the best from him images and making no sacrifices, and also because every location is different and the weather changes and emotions to, so he decides on what would benefit and make the most impact.

He suggests, that his art comprises ‘facts of the walker [ie himself] and fictions for everyone else’ “

“For us, the impact of Fulton’s art will derive in part form by our own individual responses to landscape and to nature, perceptions that are inevitably mediated by our contact with a body of art and literature from out cultural past.”  Page 15 (Book 1)

Fulton, H., Tufnell, B., Wilson, A., Mckibben, B., & Scott, D. (2002). Hamish Fulton: walking journey. London, Tate Pub.

Fulton, H. (1998). Hamish Fulton: walking artist. London, Annely Juda Fine Art.

John Blakemore - 'Black and White Photography Workshop'

In his book ‘Black and White Photography Workshop’ he talks about the relationship between the photograph and the reality it describes. The choice of subject will reflect a photographer’s personal concerns and interests, what meanings will be read could differ immensely. Blakemore sees the landscape as energy, which changed how he looks at the landscape and responding to it. For him, the relationship is equally with the location and the process.

            “A landscape, for example, may be chosen to celebrate the unique presence and beauty of a tree, to show depredations of open-cast mining, or to suggest emotional state. The relationship of subject to content will be different in each case, as will the photographic means employed to realize the photographer’s intentions.”

            “In my won landscape work, my photographs grew out of intimacy with place, whether a small stretch of beach, a wooded valley or a tiny stream. These were areas which spoke to me in some way, and that I visited and revisited.  – My intention, however, was not to make images that were about a particular place, but through familiarity to recognize those elements of place that alluded to the larger forces that shape the total landscape”

 Blakemore, J (2008). Black and White photography Workshop. Cincinnati: A David & Charles Book. P11-13
Blakemore, J., Comino-James, J., & Fletcher, J. (2011). 
John Blakemore: photographs 1955-2010. Stockport, Dewi Lewis.