Photographing written word.

 Language:
 

1. A system of objects or symbols, such as sounds or character sequences, that can be combined in various ways following a set of rules, especially to communicate thoughts, feelings, or instructions.
In a broader sense Language is how we use intricate conventionalized systems of rules to relate to the world around us. It’s because of Language that we are able not just to communicate but to learn and even think to certain degree.  When using the term language we normally associate it with Spoken/written language because it’s the most conventionalized system of communication developed. Using symbols to create meaning makes written and spoken communication possible.

Art itself could be considered as a language as it draws from symbolic use of representation and objects to convey meaning and communicate, but as it doesn’t depend on a strict set of rules or a specific system of symbols it would not be considered a language by its own, instead it works by combining these systems of communication and representation in a “free” and subjective way. Art is nurtured by language and has the ability to modify and or recombine existing forms of language.

Photography naturally uses visual language as a representational symbol that stands for something else. (A photograph of a dog describes a dog and to a certain or lesser degree exemplifies the idea of “dog”. but it IS NOT a dog.) It works as a communicational tool related to the real subject, it stands for it. Photography may also work on a meta-linguistic level in which it combines forms of communication that can be of visual indexical nature (the photo of the dog) and symbolic nature (the word dog) as spoken symbols are visually available as written language and therefore be subject of visual photography adding layers of depthless and meaning to the visual communication.

Here are some Artists who work by mixing “spoken alphabetical written” language with Visual indexical photography to create unique bodies of work.

Matt Siber.

Statement by the author:

The Untitled Project is rooted in an underlying interest in the nature of power. With the removal of all traces of text from the photographs, the project explores the manifestation of power between large groups of people in the form of public and semi-public language. The absence of the printed word not only draws attention to the role text plays in the modern landscape but also simultaneously emphasizes alternative forms of communication such as symbols, colors, architecture and corporate branding. In doing this, it serves to point out the growing number of ways in which public voices communicate without using traditional forms of written language.

The reintroduction of the text takes written language out of the context of its intended viewing environment. The composition of the layouts remain true to the composition of their corresponding photographs in order to draw attention to relative size, location and orientation. The isolation of the text from its original graphic design and accompanying logos, photographs and icons helps to further explore the nature of communication in the urban landscape as a combination of visual and literal signifiers.

Kenneth Lum.
Lum´s work is visually similar to some of the non photographic work of John Baldessari. Both Text and photography interplay in a symbiotic way in which text works as a guide for the understanding of the staged situational photograph. It could also be said that the photograph operates as an example of the situation described in the text. Its interesting to note that the artist does not favor one or other language as both the photograph and the text appear on the same hierarchical level.

Wim Delvoye

The Belgian artist reflects about the relationships of space and communication by digitally placing mundane day to day messages in monumental mountains. The work takes personal experience and turns it into universal matters, it also makes us aware of the discrepancy between our everyday human experience and the larger forces of nature.

David Shringley

Brithish artist David Shringley work shines thanks to its simplicity and humor. Inconsequencial and absurd signs work as visual puns and aphorisms sometimes re enforcing the photograph and sometimes breaking the whole meaning of it.

Noomi Ljungdell

Topography of the everyday is a work that supports itself on the subjectivity of meaning and the inability to accurately translate visual experience into written language without losing significance. Noomi photographs, categorizes content and then replaces visual information with its written equivalent. Signs remain floating in space but the viewer is unable to translate this into clear meaning and is forced to read the fragmented “image” and reconstruct significance based on its own experience.

Manto Pérez-Boza

In a photographic world increasingly filled with formulaic approaches and overdone trends that are becoming borderline clichés it is immensely satisfying to stumble upon the work of Venezuelan artist Manto Pérez.  I feel it’s inevitable not to think of the work of Jackson Pollock when looking at Manto´s work. Not only the final pieces resemble the ones of the late abstract expressionist in its chaotic visual outcome, but one can also draw conceptual ties with it.

Manto does not photograph in a “conventional way” she uses a small pinhole camera and exposes the whole film while she moves through space or the space moves around her, a dance that merges space, time and light into the film. It could even be said that the outcome image is no more than a document of a performance act in which the artist relinquishes control and gives in into the chaos of space time. 

Manto´s work is raw and visceral but yet extremely poetic and conceptually strong, unpretentiously it questions visual language, the photographic notion of point of view and spatial relationships. The fact that it goes counter to most of the contemporary photographic paradigms is just a bonus.