Phenomenology
Hermitage Park, Helensburgh. October 2021.
The first time I came across this word, I admit, I skimmed past it, thinking to go and look it up later. It rapidly became obvious though that I’d need to understand it if I were to have any chance of getting on with Rolande Barthes and his Camera Lucida as he uses it like some folk use salt. (Far too much, and it’s not good for the blood pressure.) I was also a little annoyed with myself because I’m usually pretty good at working out what words mean and given this one was basically an ‘ology about phenomena it ought not to have been too tricky. I couldn’t get my head around what any of it had to do with photography though. Was Barthes being a bit stretchy with his defnitions? Or using a word so unwieldy because he hoped that by using it to describe something so ordinary, so…obvious, everyone would think it was much more intriquing than it really was? I hoped not, but I went to look it up anyway.
Various online dictionaries had various slants to their defintions but I rather liked this one from Britannica:
(https://www.britannica.com/topic/phenomenology): phenomenology, a philosophical movement originating in the 20th century, the primary objective of which is the direct investigation and description of phenomena as consciouslyexperienced, without theories about their causal explanation and as free as possible from unexamined preconceptions and presuppositions.
In short, phenomenology is the study of how we experience things. What’s going on. And Barthes, not a photographer, was writing about what went on, for him, when he looked at photographs. He makes his position quite clear (the not being a photographer bit) and I’m not sure that he doesn’t view photographers in much the same way that many people view dentists - a necessary evil. If we are to have photographs, we must have photographers but the entire act of being photographed causes him discomfort - as indeed it does for many.
Anyway after four years of art school I was a bit tired of thinking about how Barthes felt when being photographed, or when he looked at photographs. I’m not suggesting he was wrong - his feelings are afterall his business, but could he really speak for anyone else? I pondered the way the book was on every reading list and revered by so many and couldn’t help coming back to the fact that he was not a photographer. Why weren’t we given a book on the phenomenology of photography by someone who was doing the phenomena?
Four years after graduating from art school and I find myself being invited to join in the company of a group of people, some of whom I know, some I’ve met once or twice, some I’ve only ever seen on Zoom, on an island off the west coast of Scotland, to philosophise about photography. Ha! A chance to set the record straight then! Ross, who has organised this has already sent over a sheet of questions to ponder and intriquingly has settled on the theme of phenomenology. When I saw it I did a little internal dance of delight. Until I started trying to answer some of his questions. Writing what I think is easy. Writing what I experience…I’ve never really thought about it because I’m too busy experiencing it.
Anyway, here are the questions that Ross set:
1. Do you fire away without thinking, instinctively, quickly?
2. Do you prefer to spend plenty of time studying your framing?
3. Is photography something very physical to you?
4. Do you see images in your mind before you shoot? Your own images, others’ photographs, a pre-visualisation of this soon-to-be picture?
5. Do you imagine fictional scenes or hear snatches of poetry or songs?
6. Do you sense a story that you have heard before or have just made up in your head?
7. Do you believe that you know exactly how the image will look or are you simply hopeful or curious? Do youpress the shutter release and assume the worst?
8. Are you more likely to know why you took the image only after you see it?
9. Do you believe you understand the image best before or after seeing it (on screen or print)?
He has acknowledged that answers may vary depending on the type and circumstance of the photographing and has suggested that we apply them to three images which we take along to our island retreat.
My first image is one made this month in Hermitage Park, Helensburgh. Having responded to the urge to go outside and take the camera along, it seems I footered about in town for a while before making the decision to visit the park. Once there, I was quite idle in quest for an image, happy to bide my time, work my way into the right frame of mind. I’m always quite self-concious to begin with and then gradually as I find something to pique the interest I develop a state of flow and all concerns about whatever anyone else may be thinking just disappear. It’s necessary to get there. I find I make my best work once I’ve stopped thinking about what I’m doing and just do it. Which makes writing down what I experience quite hard because I wasn’t paying attention to that. It does feel a little like I imagine being on a hunt might feel. You know the end goal but you don’t know exactly where or when you’ll get what you’re after so you are on high alert, eyes darting here and there, listening and looking out for anything that might develop or be developed into the shot. I’m keenly aware of the light - where it’s coming from, how contrasty the shadows feel, but also shapes, activity, interactions. I’ll take shots while I’m waiting, but not random and not masses. It’s more a case of keeping my hand in. Also, accepting that sometimes a shot isn’t so much a ‘decisive moment’ caught on the fly but one that you’ve worked up, prepared for or drawn out of what’s in front of you. Sometimes you see something and you reckon there’s a shot there but you’re not quite sure of what it will be so it takes some exploring and manipulating by virtue of moving yourself, or the camera or some of what’s in front of you. Step to the left. Duck down. Shoot from below? Or how does it look from above? I shoot less these days, more content to just see through the viewfinder and determine if that’s what I actaully want before I press the shutter but then of course I worry that I’ve let one go!
In this case I’d spotted the sheet on the wall while talking to some volunteers in the park. I was drawn to its visual oddity - it’s just the kind of thing I get a kick out of - something slightly out of place unless you know the reasoning behind it. It was late afternoon and the autumn sun on what had been a cold, bright day was mellowing - a perfect vehicle for the vague sense of melancholy that I was experiencing - something to do with nostalgic memories of how this park had looked when I was a child or when I brought my first born here to get us out of the house in the early days of his childhood, summer drawing to a close. The sheet was taking on all sorts of imaginary roles in my mind - halloween costume, shroud, potential den. I finished talking to the volunteers and trying not to make it seem like I couldn’t wait to get away I sort of scamper-meandered to get a better look at the wall. I took an initial photograph to see if my assessemtn of the light had been right. Yes! This was what I had been looking for. And then the wind lifted up one corner of the sheet and I knew instantly what i needed. There was a small intake of breath fired by a spark of exhilaration - preparing to pounce now, needing to keep myself steady so as not to miss the moment, keep in control as I work out how to turn what I’m looking at into the photograph I know I want to make.
I find it hard to describe the feeling of realising that I’m looking at the thing I came out to photograph. It’s akin to Barthe’s punctum but it’s not so much a piercing as a bathing/soaking up of a feeling. I am awash with the need to make this photograph. Very little else matters at that point. I forget myself, I forget anyone else who might be around as I look, assess, move, reassess, look again and eventually press the shutter. That might take me a second or two or it might take an hour, I can’t predict it. I am looking for what manipulations I can make to the scene in front of me by virtue of focus, speed, angle, shape and so on so that what I end up with in the photograph is mine, not something someone else would take. I don’t know what the end result is. It’s not documentary really. That suggests a committed relationship to the subject matter over time, and I’m too much of a magpie, too much on the look for the next shiny thing, the next opportunity to express how things are, how I see them. It’s not art either. I suppose it’s more like a journal: personal, observational, biased.
I’m not sure I’ve done a very good job of answering Ross’ questions. The only one I can answer definitively is the one about having an image in my head before I start. No. I don’t have any images in my head ever. I can’t manufacture images of things that aren’t there so I have to rely entirely on what I’m seeing in front of me. I do however know when I’ve got the shot even if I don’t look at the preview on the back of my camera or, when I’m shooting film. There may be darkroom or digital editing still to do but I know in my heart when I got it - and I suspect it’s that feeling, that certainty that is my ‘high’ - the thing that keeps me coming back for more.