Contextualisation – BOW and Heteroglossia in Photography

As one of the main themes in my body of work and dissertation is heteroglossia, I thought it would be helpful to provide a few photographic examples of this concept that I have been researching for the past two years and how it is evident in photography.

Definition of heteroglossia: two or more voices expressing their own distinct points of view, meanings and values revealing differences in social, professional, gender, cultural or age groupings. It is helpful to remember that heteroglossia can take place across time as well.

Jack Latham – Sugar Paper Theories

Pairs his images with text by Professor Gísli Guðjónsson CBE, a London-based, Icelandic world expert in ‘memory distrust syndrome’ = collaboration and two distinctive voices. One from a photographer’s point of view, the other from a forensic science point of view creates a certain tension in the work. The foreword is written by one of the accused, which adds another voice and perspective to the work. Various diary extracts from other accused also adds another layer of perspective. Latham makes use of historical newspaper clippings thereby adding another heteroglossic layer of time.

Latham, J (2016). Spread from Sugar Paper Theories

Alec Soth – Sleeping by the Mississippi

Soth recognises that photography is a language, full of dialects. The heteroglossia in this work arises from the gazes of the variety of subjects looking back at the viewer, the objects they are showing, murals on walls, the allusions to different life styles as well as the two essay which accompany in the book.

Soth, A (s.d.) Jimmie’s Apartment, Memphis, TN, 2002

John Angerson – On This Day

Pairs photographs’ locations where historical events took place with an archival photograph or artifact from the same period to create the connection with the past. The archival images and other artifacts were created by other people in the past from their distinctive points of view. On his website the accompanying text only comes up as a rollover, which is superimposed over the lower half of the images. This adds another voice to the work.

28th February 1953.
Cambridge, England.
Room 103 at the Austin Wing, Cavendish Laboratory. Cambridge University. The actual room in which James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the double helix structure of DNA.

Archive image: Photo 51 a X-ray diffraction image of crystallized DNA taken by Raymond Gosling working as a PhD student under the supervision of Rosalind Franklin. It was critical evidence in identifying the structure of DNA.
Photograph courtesy: King’s College London, UK.

Rick Schatzberg – The Boys

Contextualised in my Dissertation. Different points of view from photographs taken by his friends (vintage snapshots) and short essays written by each member of the group. Juxtaposed contemporary portraits taken by Schatzberg with vintage snapshot of the youthful individual. Vintage snapshots = utterances; photographer’s authorial voice is evident throughout the body of work.

Schatzberg, R (2020) Gatefold spread from book

Maja Daniels – Elf Dalia

Juxtaposes and/or intersperses her photos with those of Tenn Lars Perrson who also took photographs of the Elf Dalia region of northern Sweden a century ago. Her work is in dialogue with that of Perrson, as well as through time.

Spread from Elf Dalia by Maja Daniels showing juxtaposition with Tenn Lars Perrson’s image.

Bibliography

Angerson, J. (2019) On This Day. At: https://www.johnangerson.com/on-this-day/ (Accessed  24/08/2022).

Daniels, M. (2019) Elf Dalia. At: https://majadaniels.com/elf-dalia-book/ (Accessed  24/08/2022).

Latham, J. (2017) Sugar Paper Theories. At: https://www.jacklatham.com/project/sugar-paper-theories/mwq1qn15us1wvn9py3utnajb4nap1u (Accessed  10/03/2020).

Schatzberg, R. (2020) The Boys. (1st ed.) S.l.: powerHouse Books.

Soth, A. (2017) Sleeping by the Mississippi. At: https://alecsoth.com/photography/projects/sleeping-by-the-mississippi (Accessed  26/02/2021).

Final Decisions

This final part of the module deals with decisions regarding the final output of my Body of Work. It suggests that it will be a helpful exercise to attend a major exhibition and a smaller one to look at the presentation styles and write a reflective commentary on my experiences of these exhibitions. As I’m due to go in for hip surgery in a couple of weeks’ time this is not a feasible option for me and besides I have decided on presenting my work in a book format, so I will rather provide a commentary on two books. I have chosen Jack Latham’s Sugar Paper Theories and Rick Schatzberg’s The Boys, as both are relevant to my practice.

Fig. 1 Cover of Sugar Paper Theories by Jack Latham

	Sugar Paper Theories	The Boys
Size	31 cm x 23 cm	24.5 cm x 20.2 cm
Format	Soft cover	Hard cover
Paper	Majority of work is printed on coloured construction paper. The different coloured sections serve as colour coding for re-enactment photos taken from police archives (on black paper), related newspaper articles (on pink paper), diary entries from one of the suspects (on thin white paper), and detailed explanatory texts (on yellow paper). I think this helps to highlight the forensic nature of the work. Latham is replicating a type of filing system that the police may have used.	Most of the work is printed on matte with the exception of the contemporary portraits that are on glossy paper.
Cover	The cover and back is also done on construction paper and features a rather cryptic sketch, possibly a replica of the police sketch of the sequence of events as the crime unfolded. Various colour coded circles with initials feature prominently. The written text is also in Icelandic which straight away confuses the viewer.	The cover and back of the book features the photograph where a crime scene took place. The tone is very muted and the title of the book is embossed and is only visible at a certain angle if the light catches it right. It is, however, quite tactile.
Structure	Makes use of French folds (a sheet that is folded vertically and then horizontally, allowing a piece to start the size of a booklet or brochure and expand to a final size that feels like a poster. Also makes use of larger fold out pages on matte paper. Interspersed are varying sizes of newspaper clippings and diary extracts.	A series of vintage snapshots in closed gatefold spreads opening to reveal contemporary portraits. Contains an essay in a separate booklet located in a pocket at the rear of the book.
Style	Documentary	Snapshot & Portraits
Page number-ing	None	None
About	A body of work that addressed the unresolved and most controversial murder investigation in Iceland’s history.	A body of work addressing male friendships, lifelong memories, aging and death.
Inner contents	Contains police archival photos of the crime scene as well as newspaper cuttings printed on craft paper. Crime scenes were re-enacted. Makes use of appropriation – police archival photos, newspaper clippings, diary entries.	Contains vintage snapshots of friends and contemporary portraits. Also features a photograph of a location where a crime scene took place. Each chapter begins with a page reflecting a childhood memory by each of the friends.

Fig. 2 Cover of The Boys by Rick Schatzberg

Both books are about memory, but very different kinds of memory. Whereas The Boys is more a nostalgic trip down memory lane and the new memories that surface when we retell stories, Latham deals more with the forensic aspects of memory and questions the relationship between memory and truth. How trustworthy are our memories really? Latham’s body of work also highlights the concept of false memory.

Latham’s presentation suits his work admirably as it takes on the form of a police docket and has a forensic feel to it. Schatzberg’s presentation also suits his work as it resembles a vintage album in some ways. The interaction by the viewer is enhanced in each case by the different size fold outs that the viewer encounters and has to engage with.

Bibliography

Latham, J. (2019) Sugar paper theories. (2nd ed.) London: Here Press.

Schatzberg, R. (2020) The Boys. (1st ed.) S.l.: powerHouse Books.

The Boys by Rick Schatzberg in Conversation with David Campany

This was an incredibly interesting talk that was suggested to me by fellow student Mark. I almost didn’t attend this, but was so glad I did. Having David Campany as the facilitator was an obvious draw card, but Rick Schatzberg’s work was really interesting.

Schatzberg decided to create this body of work after two of his lifelong friends passed away. He was part of a fairly large group that had kept in touch since high school and they were all very close. That type of friendship is quite rare these days. The body of work alternates between a collection of vintage snapshots, text and portraits. It was only part way through his presentation that I realised that his work is an excellent example of heteroglossia in photography.

Schatzberg uses vintage photos which were taken by various friends in the group, so visually employs different points of view or authorship. The text is written by Schatzberg and also contains comments by his friends – again heteroglossia. Schatzberg makes use of his friends’ differences in speech and diversity while maintaining his own authorial intent and creative style.

The structure of his photobook lends itself to the concept of heteroglossia as well. Aside from pages with vintage snapshots, each friend has his own “chapter”, introduced by a two page vintage snapshot spread which opens out as a gatefold which in turn features an internal two-sided portrait page with accompanying vintage portrait on the gatefold – almost like a book within a book. Schatzberg showed a video of his book so that the viewer would have a better idea of the physicality of the book. The page through is from 4:52 – 7:31 of the video below for easy reference.

The cover of the book is embossed and has a very muted palate. Schatzberg explained that the photograph on the cover, while representing one of the groups favourite hangout places, was also a scene of a rather grizzly murder and this fact helped to inform his choice why he wanted a darker cover for the book. On the inside of the back cover is a sleeve containing another smaller book. This contains an essay by Rick Moody.

The portraits were all taken with a 4 x 5 camera and some of the friends had agreed to pose without shirts in order to show the effects of aging on their bodies. A few were uncomfortable doing this and Schatzberg felt he didn’t want to do a typology of ageing men’s bodies so left the choice to his friends. He also included himself in the series. His intent was to do the portraits in natural light and he wanted them to be emotional to “force the viewer to confront the old guy”. They were proud to show their scars.

The book is also about suburbia – it carries a universal theme of space and place. Mainly it is about friendship and this is well represented in the choice of vintage snapshots which were chosen for the project. When asked Schatzberg revealed that he allowed his designer choose which vintage snapshots to include. As Campany remarked old photographs usually come with a certain pathos, but he personally didn’t feel this nostalgia except for the passing surface acknowledgment of the old photographs. So there is no cliched experience.

Relevance to my practice (CS and BOW): As mentioned above, I believe Rick Schatzberg’s project forms an excellent example of heteroglossia in photography and I look at it in more depth in my Contextual Studies. The interweaving of the authorial voice alongside those of the friends is quite similar to what I do in my BOW. The archival images that I use represent the others’ voices alongside my contemporary landscape and photomontage images (my voice), show dialogic interactions in a body of work and also across time and place.  Schatzberg’s body of work delivers a prime example of how heteroglossia borrows off the past and how memory and the archive interact with other people creating new meanings.

Bibliography

Virtual PowerHouse Books Launch: The Boys Rick Schatzberg in conversation with David Campany (2021) Directed by POWERHOUSE Arena [Online Video via Zoom] At: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T6EwsRFPdo (Accessed  24/01/2021).