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Brief Note on Photographic Language
Jim Casper says in this book, “The language of photography continues to get more interesting and more complex as it becomes the most universal medium of communication worldwide.” This may be the most compelling statement about photography I’ve ever read.
Etymologically, photography means not so much “drawing with light”, but “writing with light”. Writing is a form of communication, and this insight should not surprise you. We’re constantly writing, every day, from emails and messages through social media, to papers and other documents that might be more complex in terms of their language and audience.
We’re challenged to create more meaningful work than ever because we live in the era of endless content streaming. The most striking way to do this is through photography because, as Casper says, it is “the most universal medium of communication”. The first step in creating this meaningful work is to define the audience that will be reading our images.
About the levels of photographic language
Just like regular written language, photographic language has different levels or stages. Let’s start with the most basic level: a short message through SMS or some other messaging platform. Its purpose is to notify someone about something. The seriousness will vary, but in essence, it is a brief communication. The same happens with images posted on social media — in the vast majority of cases, they serve a very short-term purpose.
Now imagine a novel, a compendium of thousands and thousands of words, some with such an impact that even century-old ones are still read by us. Something similar has happened to “The Americans” by Robert Frank, or many other great examples of photographic narrative. The body of work is still valid and meaningful to us, the audience that is magnetically drawn to reading the photographic language.
About the temporality of the photographic language
Even though photography allows us to preserve a moment for a vast period of time — what with social media networks and the modern dynamics of sharing pictures — most images are doomed to be quickly forgotten. As passionate and serious photographers, we must be able to know when an image deserves a more prolonged existence. But how can we achieve this…
