Photography is communicative at its core. Even when it seems it is not communicating anything in particular, it is still posing a question of some sort, an ambiguity, an uncertainty, a doubt, etc.
The communicative quality of photography is at its highest. It doesn’t only describe (what these series of written word are only cable of) however, it shows. With a simple photo of a certain element, you could simply see BEFORE & AFTER version of that certain subject. So not only it shows but it gives you all the details too. The amazing part is that the details could be of your own choice given that YOU choose what details to see in a photo. So as long as it shows and it makes YOU choose the details, it engages you too.
It is a reader-response approach to a piece of art. For example, in Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein, the monster doesn’t exist, so to speak, until the reader reads Frankenstein and reanimates it to life, becoming a co-creator of the text. In terms of engagement of the audience here is the same thing. The audience of the photo somehow decides on the details to watch and is cooperating with the photographer in communication so the emphasis is not only on the sender of the message but on the recipient too.
Sometimes I tend to see a photo as a buffet of breakfast tables in a hotel where everything is available and guests decide on what they prefer to eat.
Beside Showing and engagement, the paradoxical quality of this communicative medium is how it is communicating most indirectly, while in fact, it is so direct. Take any photo of your choice and you see it is not necessarily suggesting the audience to look at a certain element or get to a certain conclusion but with the help of technical factors, it is pointing to an ultimate message of the photo which even on a more complex layer could be an uncertain message.
The question that may arise is “What” is exactly being communicated here? What makes sense for me is the fact that the photographer is responding to a point of interest, a preoccupation of mind, a subject matter that has been long on the mind of the photographer. A topic that has been studied and analyzed by the photographer and they know the ins and outs of the topic. They know every overall and subtle aspect of the topic so when they see it in the real world emerging before their eyes they know how to capture it in its most effective moment. Therefore they make sense in their photos given that they are making a meaningful statement regarding the topic.
It may seem that there is spontaneity about the photo and there is not much thinking behind it which is partly true. However, since the subject matter has been enthusiasm and preoccupation of the photographer’s mind for long before clicking the shutter, the positive emotional response is being placed at the right spot automatically.
When it comes to spontaneity, there is a bit of a different perspective in different mediums of expression. For instance, spontaneity played a major role in the Romantic poetry of 1800. The poet’s emotions were provoked by their nature (point of interest) and later they would recall all those emotions in tranquility and put them through words. So in the event of “emotion recollected in tranquillity” they would write spontaneous words coming to their mind without editing them. On the other hand, the spontaneity for the photographer happens in the very first stage. In photography, there is no “emotion recollected in tranquillity”. The overflow of emotions about a certain subject matter happens just upon the photographer’s encounter with it. So spontaneity is the result of an insight gained prior in life and is practiced & developed enough to show itself when the topic of interest happens.
Similar to almost all other mediums of expression the initial response to a subject matter is spontaneous but the effort that follows is not. Romantic poets believed in their first draft. Photographers mostly tend to edit. Given that the technicality that follows spontaneity is the result of consistent practice, the many edits a photographer places on a photo depend again on their satisfaction. The satisfaction itself comes from the aforementioned insight gained in life and how the final product of the photography is similar to the one that happened in real life and is what the photographer expected.
It may seem that there is a complexity to expressing and responding in photography which is quite alright. However, on a larger scale, it is quite simple. Moreover, as mentioned before photography is very much an all-inclusive device in communication. Therefore a ting of complexity is quite acceptable for such communicative photography.