Article

Name: The Plot in the Photography of Modernity

Authors: I. V. Silantev

Institute of Philology, SB RAS

Abstract: The article analyzes the photography of modernity through the lens of plot theory. It shows that the complexity of the story-line and plot of modernist photography depends on its general conventional communicative status – documentary or artistic. The story-line of documentary photography puts in its center natural objects as such and natural relations between these objects, including eventive relations. The plot of an artistic photograph overcomes its original natural object-nature and takes photography to the level of object forms as such and formal relations between object forms, thereby to a certain extent alienating the form from the objects themselves. The combination of the story-line object vector and the plot formal vector leads to the formation of the phenomenon of the photographic image. The meaningful dynamic potential of this image is constituted by a constructive contradiction of the reality of the object and its form, which is beyond reality. On the contrary, postmodern photography goes beyond its nature and links itself to the text. Thus, from the poetics of the visual image, postmodern photography goes on to the rhetoric of the verbal concept and loses independence outside of its declared field. Postmodern photography is characterized, first, by overcoming the dichotomy between the plot and story-line. Postmodern photography at the very “entrance point” to itself doubts the reality and commonsensical nature of the depicted object. This leads to the erosion of the distinct modernist line between documentary and artistic photography. Photography “does not believe” itself, therefore it is meta-documentary and para-documentary, and so it does not need its antagonist – artistic photography. Secondly, the photography of postmodernity sees relevance in the problem of the correlation between the narrative and anarrative beginnings, as well as the external statement, title, and commentary, included into the orbit of the photographic image. The text becomes necessary for the photo, because only the text can verify it. The viewer now believes (or does not believe) not the photo itself, but what is said in the juxtaposed text. The article contains a selective analysis of photographs by Henri Cartier- Bresson from the thematic cycle, published in his book “A propos de Paris”.

Keywords: H. Cartier-Bresson, photography, plot, Modernity, Post-modern

Bibliography:

Cartier-Bresson H. A propos de Paris. Texts by Véra Feyder and André Pieyre de Mandiargues. 8th Edition. New York, Boston, London, 2009.