Is this photograph taken? The active (act of) collaboration with photography

ABSTRACT

Over more than 30 years of commercial and fine art photographic practice, I have often noticed remarkable disparities between the scenes, objects, events or moments ‘out there’ I had attempted to record – and the images within the resulting photographs. These (sometimes subtle, sometimes profound, but rarely anticipatable) disparities between what I had seen and what the photograph shows me offer the tantalising suggestion that there may be something else going on here – but something which the popular conception of photography may hinder our ability to recognise. This article explores the implications of four central assumptions implicit within the popular conception of photography that may impede alternative ways of thinking about photographic practice. Supported by a number of photographs that depict scenes, events and ‘moments’ that I will argue were not ‘taken’ but were instead created by the act of photographing them, I will suggest that new opportunities for practice may be available by ‘re-imagining’ the practice of photography as an active – or as an act of – collaboration between medium and practitioner.

KEYWORDS:

• Collaboration
• the popular conception of photography
• the subject of the photograph
• bino-chrono consciousness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Originally an editorial and illustrative photographer in Toronto, Canada (1982–1993), since withdrawing from commercial practice, Rutherford’s photographic projects explore the active (or, the act of) collaboration by the medium in the creation of scenes, events and ‘moments’ that did not exist (and sometimes could not have existed) until brought into being by the act of photographing them. Rutherford’s photographic projects have been exhibited in Canada, the US, the UK, New Zealand, Japan and France. Rutherford’s website: http://www.theshadowofthephotographer.co.uk. Rutherford is currently Programme Leader of MA Advertising at Bournemouth University (UK).

ORCID

Rutherford http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2808-5419

Notes

1. I am not referring here to the accuracy of our interpretation of the social/cultural meaning or significance of objects, but only to our confidence in our ability to discern their ‘true’ form or appearance.

2. A helpful insight into the camera’s two-dimensional view of the world is offered in the 1884 satirical novella Flatland by Edwin Abbott Abbott which describes a world that exists in only two dimensions and whose inhabitants are thereby unable to even conceive of a third.