Guest Feature: Photographs of Nothing
Today on Children of Vision we have an honorary guest from the world of art and culture - Catherine Fehily.
Catherine is Head of the CIT Crawford College of Art and Design, Cork, Ireland. She has worked in Higher Education in Art, Design and the Humanities for more than 35 years. Catherine taught and led the BA Photography programme at Staffordshire University, UK, before becoming Head of School and then Associate Dean of Faculty, and finally taking up her current role as Head of College in Cork.
She chose this submission by Kelsey, 16, USA. Here is why this beautiful photo spoke to her:
Photo by Kelsey @photosbykels, 16, USA, submitted to the Children of Vision Instagram Project.
“I was drawn to this image because I have had in my mind the idea of collecting photographs of bends in roads, for years – a project still to be done! For some reason, many photographers have been fascinated by these seemingly featureless views – they’re not picturesque, and have nothing to do with chocolate-box pretty vistas. Their interest is in the sense of possibility they evoke – the sense that the future is unpredictable; that we can’t see what’s around the corner; that there are unforeseeable adventures, risks, dangers and delights ahead. For me, they belong to a larger category of photographs that I call “photographs of nothing”. I love them! They seem to be what photography is best at: paying attention to the things we never notice. You know you’re making one of them when a passer-by would ask “What are you taking a photograph of?” because there is nothing that they can see in front of the camera that would be photograph-worthy. And this is what such photographers (including you, Kelsey) bring to the world – the ability to see the things we miss and to show them to us.
One of the ways I judge a photograph to be “good” is to see whether I can answer the questions: “Why was this photograph made? Why at this moment? Why from this point of view?” And so on. In the case of this image, the answers come very readily. I love the striking yellow of the lines in the middle of the road, and the way that exact colour is repeated in the road sign that seems to state the obvious – the road is bending to the right! In the photograph, framed as it is, these become strongly graphic elements, standing out in the monochrome landscape. So we can see immediately what this is a photograph “of” – an empty road, a snowy mountain landscape, etc. But because Kelsey made an image of this scene, it is now an image “about” other things – the road can symbolise a life, a future; the arrow begins to mean something about a sense of direction, of purpose, or a symbol of authority. We’re prompted to question ourselves, to think, and an apparently simple photograph of nothing very much makes us re-evaluate, even if in a very small way, our perceptions of the world around us.
Congratulations Kelsey – keep going!”