Creative Photography: Subversive Detail and Conceptual Contrast

Subversive content in photographs. No, I do not mean politically subversive, but details in the image that subvert or comment on the image's subject. For example, you may be attempting a very serious image of an important landmark, let's say the Iwo Jima memorial in Arlington, Virginia, but in the foreground are parked a string of dump trucks or perhaps a string of circus vans. The presence of such contradictory details undermines the meaning and mood of the image. Of course, it can also be used by the photographer in a controlled manner to create commentary.

Here is an excellent example where subversive content is used to enhance the image. The graffiti in the background becomes a compositional element leading the eye to the hugging couple frame right and the joyous dancing figure of the iPod advertisement directly behind them communicates what the photographer "mind reads" or imagines is their inner feelings.

Hugs (San Francisco Streets 2007, godfrey digiorgi 2007)

(It reminds me of a late image by André Kertész from the 1970s of a couple I saw published in a photo magazine in the late 1970s, which if I recall, he made from his window).

Reflections in windows have famously been used as a way to introduce subversive content into images.

The important thing to keep in mind is the idea is not to introduce a lot of clutter or trash detail into your image, but to let the extraneous detail become a commentary. It has to mean something. You need to ensure the image forms and idea not just a composition (although sometimes a certain composition has such a powerful affect on the viewer that is sufficient to constitute an great image).

A good example of this by the same photographer. This image is powerful merely for it sense of captured movement and how the woman, coat, dog and background material "divide the frame," which is simply a term of art for how the three dimensional objects in the image divide the flat two dimensional area of the image into sections in an interesting way. Dividing the frame is an important concept in any two dimensional visual art.

Woman and Dog (San Francisco Streets 2007, godfrey digiorgi 2007)

Photographers also use contrast...not not contrast in exposure terms...but contrast in terms of visual language. For example, this image creates a feeling of loneliness by isolating the human figures as impersonal silhouettes in a large space inhabited by shafts of luminous light but contrasts the aloneness by presenting a group of people, not just one person. By this he contrasts loneliness and togetherness in the same image.

Across The Light (Tate Modern, London 2005, godfrey digiorgi)


By the way, I do not have to mention Godfrey is an excellent photographer who understands these important principles of authorship in photography. I found examples of both visual ideas discussed in this entry quickly on his site. He obviously understands that to make good photographs, to make photographs that are significant artifacts for consideration by society, the images must say something, not just be well exposed and composed, that the photographer must establish and manipulate a visual vocabulary. His best images have something to say and the few that fall flat are the ones that fail to establish and communicate an idea. A photograph without the presence of the author is nothing more than a documentary image (those have value as well, but that is not what I am discussing here...I certainly appreciate vernacular and documentary images).

Even if the photographer did not intend a specific message the images communicate one. There is a quote, I cannot recall exactly, but it was regarding hypocrisy and concluded the mind cannot know itself completely at once, which applies.