Proceedings of The 6th International Conference on Modern Approaches in Humanities and Social sciences
Year: 2023
DOI:
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The Relation between Photography and Narrative Text: An Analysis of the Photography Series ‘Pigeon Hill – Then and Now’ by Jeffrey A. Woolen
Sinem Taş
ABSTRACT:
This paper attempts to study the interrelation between ‘photography’ and ‘ narrative text’ in the context of punctum and proposes to make an analysis of how juxtaposition of these two elements have impact on looking at the other. The relation between the person who looks at the photograph and the referent in the photography will be part of this study through the analysis of how the narrative text alters the noema of photography and the process of transformation of the subject. French philosopher Roland Barthes writes in his seminal book Camera Lucida that the noema of photography is has been. He emphasises the true level of time of photography then true level of perception. Therefore, photography has a feature of being a proof of the referent of being there in a certain time. I argue that juxtaposition of narrative text with photography does not negate or reduce the noema of photography but alters it to why. While photographic image is about that moment of the photographic operation, the narrative text transcends now and becomes about the past, detailed present or future of the operational moment. Herewith the first argument above, I argue that narrative text gives back to the subject its subjectivity halting the transformation of the subject turning into object. In this context, this paper proposes to analyse the ‘Pigeon Hill – Then and Now’ photography series by the American photographer Jeffrey A. Wolin in which he uses narrative texts along with photography.
keywords: media, noema, other, punctum, Roland Barthes