Photographers: Historians or Creative Artists?

By

Obododimma Oha

Sometime ago, I updated my Facebook wall and indicated what was “on (my) mind” as whether Facebook was fast-turning into an electronic album where, if we buy a new Christmas costume, we want the whole world to see it and commend us. It was not only the costume that was the only focus of attention in that update (although it would seem so). The focus was also on the author of the image, the photographer. The need to focus on the image-maker came up a while ago as I was reading up Facebook updates and saw one that featured the representation of photographers as “historians.” Yes; we are familiar with that. We could think of photographers as telling stories in the visual mode. They are not just there to mimick the images seen by the mediator, the lens. Haven’t some of them left their mounted cameras before to adjust your neck, this position or that? That flying attire or this background? Surely, they are intervening in the way the lens would see what it sees and for the camera to record or tell part of the story.  That intervention is a choice, a  creative selection from options.

So, you cannot climb over the photographer to view the image. In fact, the photographer joins the camera in telling the story, but the photographer is also part of the story. The agents of the making of the story are also part of the story. Remove the photographer and the story changes!

Yes, the photographer matters in the way a photograph tells the story. Sometimes, some photographers enter the act of image-making fully, even creating an impression that they are the ones giving the image as it is. Do you blame them? That is maximum involvement. In fact, I like watching them act, whether they are armed with the ubiquitous Android phones or JVC or some of those cameras that make you wonder whether the shot is a real shot and a bullet would come flying  or a rockect is launched at the target. Stop terrorizing me, camera makers, and confusing shot with shot!

Well, let us return to a safer zone and talk about photographers as historians and creative artistry. I have said that the photographers are agents of story-telling that are interestingly part of the story. How can one be writing a novel and yet be a character in it? Amazing, but there are such stylistic twists. Technology is even further providing a very “problematic” twist through photoshopping software which extends the creativity brought in by the photo story-teller. The photoshop further brings in the flexibility of iconicity of the image, so that reality and truth are greatly undermined. What you see is just a matter of possibility, not certainty; the image is worth a thousand words but that is practically an image created by you. It reminds one about creation itself. We also try to recreate ourselves and our world. We are not satisfied with the way things are, or everything existing is just a raw material. We can adjust it, at least  a bit and have a different reality. So, photoshopping is a philosophy, a philosophy of the images. And creation is about images of images (not just a simple matter of turning a photograph into a hand-drawn representation, asking technology to move backwards a bit).

Photographers tell their stories visually, but that is not the end of the story. When the framed photograph gets home, the wife or whoever cares would pick it up, ask it to be part of the visual story on the walls. She has the story all worked out in her head. She knows the positions for the photo (you could say the plot of her story) and the company some would have to keep. Some photographs could be placed nearer others to maintain a rigid visual syntax. Some images may even be iterated, thanks to more photographs coming in from weddings and other social occasions in a country like Nigeria. Don’t ask me how the numerous commercial photographers know their targets! Anyway, do not attempt to tamper with the way she has planned and executed her visual story. You could be taking a great and grave risk. She has told her story and she is also part of the story; on a page that is the parlour.

She is a visual historian (the same way you have the oral historian in the raconteur), but she is also a creative artist. She has creative plans, the photographer too. In fact, she is only following in the footsteps of the photographer in the image-making project. But this essay is not about her; she is only a proxy and related things somehow matter to us. The photographer, the major figure she represents, is the focus. I want to join my Facebook friend in recognising this figure as a historian, but provide an extension: that visual historian is also a creative artist!