Stories of a War: Narrative and the Single Photograph Gregory Battye University of Wollongong

University of Wollongong Research Online University of Wollongong Thesis Collection University of Wollongong Thesis Collections 2001 Stories of a war: narrative and the single photograph Gregory Battye University of Wollongong Recommended Citation Battye, Gregory, Stories of a war: narrative and the single photograph, Doctor of Creative Arts thesis, Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Wollongong, 2001. http://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/932 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] STORIES OF A WAR: NARRATIVE AND THE SINGLE PHOTOGRAPH A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the degree Doctor of Creative Arts from UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG by Gregory Battye, Bachelor of Psychology (Hons) (WA), Dip. Lib (UNSW), Grad. Dip. Media (CCAE). Faculty of Creative Arts 2001 ii CERTIFICATION I, Gregory Battye, declare that this thesis, submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Creative Arts, in the Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Wollongong, is wholly my own work unless otherwise referenced or acknowledged. This document has not been submitted for qualifications at any other academic institution. Gregory Battye Exhibition: 15 May - 3 July 2001 ADFA 3-29 August 2001 University of Wollongong Documentation: 19 December 2001 Ill TABLE OF CONTENTS List of figures vi Abstract viii Acknowledgements xi Introduction: 1 Chapter 1: From Pre-Raphaelite to Photographic Light 20 The picture-logic of paintings 20 Painting, photography and imagination 36 Chapter 2: Analysis and Definition: Narrative and Theory 49 Formal approaches 49 Psychoanalytic approaches 80 Chapter 3: Origins and Antecedents 1: Some Words and Some Pictures 93 Words for and against: previous analyses which address the issue of narrative 93 Arguing from images 113 Chapter 4: Origins and Antecedents 2: The Constructed Photograph 139 Montage, tableaux and history 139 Straight photography in the service of the constructed subject 146 IV Self-presentations 148 Narrative tableaux 154 Miniature stages 160 Chapter 5: All My Own Work 168 War photographs: imaging and imagining 168 Advertising: never mind the content, feel the style 182 More in the Directorial mode 187 Onward as to war 194 A meeting of the ways 200 Theory into practice into theory: building on foundations 202 Integrating the narrative modes: practice 207 Aesthetics and desire 223 Conclusion 227 Listing of photographs in exhibition 233 Reproductions of exhibited photographs 234 Footnotes 259 Authors cited in text 267 Appendix A: Original photographs referred to by the exhibited images. Appendix B: Exhibition catalogue from ADFA, together with copies of documents from previous exhibitions referred to in main text. V Appendix C: Catalogue essay, catalogue listing and copies of wall texts from Wollongong exhibition. Appendix D: CD containing work-in-progress images and unused images vi LIST OF FIGURES 1. Henri Cartier-Bresson: Place de l'Europe, Paris, 1932 2 2. Roger Fenton: The Valley of the Shadow of Death 3 3. John Singleton Copley: Watson and the Shark 26 4. John Everett Millais: The Blind Girl 30 5. Robert Braithwaite Martineau: The Last Day in the Old Home 32 6. Oscar Rejlander: The Two Ways of Life 43 7. Henry Peach Robinson: Fading Away 46 8. Henri Cartier-Bresson: Beance, France, 1958 76 9. Marie-Paule Negre: (no title given) 96 10. Larry Clark: "Untitled", from the portfolio Tulsa 118 11. Robert Capa: Death of a Loyalist Soldier 121 12. Arnold Newman: Alfred Krupp, 1963 126 13. Ralph Bartholemew Jr: Sunshine Biscuit, 1953 132 14. Ralph Bartholemew Jr: Eastman Kodak, 1953 133 15. Ralph Bartholemew Jr: Eastman Kodak 135 16. Ralph Bartholemew Jr: General Electric, 1939 136 17. Eileen Cowin: Untitled (from the "Docudramas" series) 149 18. Eileen Cowin: Untitled 155 19. Nic Nicosia:Like Photojournalism 156 20. Nic Nicosia: Violence 158 21. Gregory Crewdson: Untitled (from the "Natural Wonder" series 161 22. David Levinthal, (no title given) from Hitler Moves East 164 23. Greg Battve: Bondi 171 24. Greg Battye: untitled television image 179 25. Greg Battve: The Dead Starling 181 26. Greg Battve: Woman in pool 184 27. Greg Battve: Graveside Visit 188 28. Greg Battye: untitled genre photograph 189 29. Greg Battye: Christine 196 30. Greg Battve: Eternal Barbie Triangle 199 31. Greg Battve: Remembering the War 203 viii ABSTRACT Theoretical accounts of the communicative powers of photography characterise it, inter alia, as intrinsically a medium of the instant, depicting time only insofar as it depicts the moment of exposure. While a few special cases, such as time exposures or multiple exposures, are acknowledged as technical exceptions, the single unmanipulated photographic picture is generally held to exclude time. Since narrative, however defined or circumscribed, conveys information about the unfolding of sequential events over some period of time, it would initially seem that narrative and photography can have no common ground. This research seeks that common ground: a way of making photographs that use narrative and convey narrative information, and a theoretical framework that supports this activity. It seeks to answer the question: can a single photographic picture — a picture made by photographic means, whether by single exposure or through combination or manipulation — be a narrative? Thematically, the project stemmed from a desire to address, through creative work, the author's childhood memories of stories which had 'attached' themselves to family snapshots taken in the 1940s and 1950s, depicting family events associated with his father's service in World War n. This notion of 'attached' narrative is specifically dealt with in both the creative work and the theoretical domain. Through a concentration on World War II as an important backdrop to the family snapshots, war photography gradually emerged as an area of particular, though not exclusive, interest, through which the theoretical and artistic concerns could be constructively integrated. The images made at the end of the project deal with the ix photographic representation of war, a topic which integrates the creative, the theoretical and the personal. The boundaries and concerns of the project are approached discursively at first through a historical comparison between selected narrative paintings and early non-realist photography. Particular attention is paid to some Pre- Raphaelite painters, for their use of photographic techniques their influence on photography itself, and to contemporary photographers such as Oscar Rejlander and Henry Peach Robinson, who viewed their composite photographs as constructed pictures akin to painting. Both groups shared a concern with moral messages, often framed in narrative terms. This brief survey foregrounds ways in which, to the extent that paintings can be narrative, so too can photographs. Some formalist and psychoanalytic modes of narrative potentially applicable to photography were distilled from their original applications to literature and film, and used as a background for an analysis of the few pre existing direct applications of narrative theory to photography. This analysis encompasses critical writings by others about narrative in photography generally and about particular key examples, as well as original analyses undertaken by this author, of photographs with apparent narrative significance. The course of this analysis increasingly focused on narrative tableaus as the most fruitful and appropriate style of work through which the photographic representation of war, rather than war itself, could be addressed. The latter part of this documentation follows the development process through which the author's final creative work was produced, in the form of narrative tableaus referring to, and mimicking, famous war X photographs. These pictures connect with their historical referents through several different forms of narrative device derived from the theoretical investigation. The exhibition, which includes new versions of the early family photomontages as well as the latter tableau photographs, is analysed as to its success in making narrative photographs, and a brief conclusion determines that while the individual photographs cannot be said to be narratives, they do in fact narrate. xi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the staff of the Faculty of Creative Arts at the University of Wollongong, all of whom have cheerfully given me assistance on many occasions. Of my many supervisors over the years, I must single out a few for special thanks. Professor Sue Rowley made me feel that this project might be possible and maybe even worthwhile. Dr Fran Dyson located the wood in the sparse forests of early drafts. Jacky Redgate asked necessary and difficult questions about my photographs, and thus clarified what they were about — no easy task. Professor Sharon Bell pointed out both problems and potential in my writing in a manner which inspired me to try my hardest, but her most remarkable achievement was to actually get me to finish. This project is dedicated in part to my late father, who would have loved to see it completed. In greatest measure though, it is dedicated to Georgia Tayler, my loyal partner, who held up more than half the sky for so long without complaint. Battye 1 INTRODUCTION A photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Place de l'Europe, Paris, 1932 (fig. 1) encapsulates a key aspect of his peculiar talent perhaps more than any other single image from his illustrious career. On a grey day, in a flooded urban yard enclosed by a high spiked metal fence, a bowler-hatted man leaps from the end of a ladder lying in a pool of shallow water and is caught by Cartier-Bresson's shutter a split second before the man's descending heel breaks the smooth surface of the water. No supplementary information is given, other than the title. Can we induce, with a satisfactory level of certainty, what has happened in the moments before the one depicted? Do we know what will happen next? Another photograph, Roger Fenton's The Valley of the Shadow of Death (fig.

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