Curious Anonymous Stories – Part 3
This is the third installment in my series of “curious anonymous stories.” It consists of a collection of my randomly combined travel photos, which, through juxtaposition alone, seem to suggest time, place and narrative details totally unrelated to their original subjects.
When I look at photos of unfamiliar people or places, I tend to imagine stories that might be behind – and give context to – the images in question. I find it interesting that when a series of photos are identified as related, regardless of whether or not they actually are, the “story” or connection between the shots suddenly becomes easier to surmise.
The following “story” has four chapters. The characters and incidents portrayed are fictitious. No identification with actual persons, places, buildings and products is intended, but…
chapter 1
chapter 2
chapter 3
chapter 4
Are you familiar with the novels of W.G. Sebald? I’m thinking, in particular, of the one entitled, Austerlitz. Apparently, that novel’s narrative was structured around–I’m not sure if this is true–a cache of photos he’d found in an estate sale. Wikipedia says this of his novels in general, so it must be true, “They are notable for their curious and wide-ranging mixture of fact (or apparent fact), recollection and fiction, often punctuated by indistinct black-and-white photographs set in evocative counterpoint to the narrative rather than illustrating it directly. His novels are presented as observations and recollections made while traveling around Europe. They also have a dry and mischievous sense of humor.” Or if you doubt that review– ;) –there’s a much more thoughtful analysis of his use of photography in the nice little essay, “Trauma Obscura: photographic media in WG Sebald’s Austerlitz” (http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-130853215.html) Anyway, your montages live in similar sorts of narrative places or spaces, creating worlds of lost? or just found? stories.
From the Trauma Obscura essay – I love the thought / premise that a photograph is, according to Roland Barthes
“literally an emanation of the referent.” As an emanation, the photographic object therefore retains a tangible “trace” of the photographic subject. Thus, in his estimation, the photographic record of the past is unique amongst those of all other media because it is founded on a chemical process that makes it “possible to recover and print directly the luminous rays emitted by a variously lighted object”
It’s an incredibly obvious way of thinking about photography that, somehow, I’ve never considered.
I was not familiar with W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz – soon to be corrected!
Thanks for your comment.