Search results for ""Author Stuart Franklin""

Ambiguity Revisited is concerned with the manner in which pictures communicate with the spectator. Its focus lies in those fluid, indeterminate spaces where our reading of images, in art and photography, exercises and draws upon our imagination, memory, and experience. Sir William Empsons seminal (1930) text: Seven Types of Ambiguity is used as a springboard to discussion, towards a fresh way of exploring ambiguity beyond English literature, and in a broader framework to that contained in John Bergers (1989) Another Way of Telling. The use of ambiguity in art and photography, as in literature, is both a conscious and an unconscious act; and ambiguity influences the way in which we respond to work, from Leonardo da Vincis portraits to the photographer William Egglestons engaging and idiosyncratic reflections on Americas Deep South. This ambiguity is a force for good, or at least one to be reckoned with, due to its participatory nature in actively engaging with, or masking itself from, the viewer. Ambiguity is infrequently discussed but is highly relevant as an expressive device. It holds a position at the core of communication within the visual arts. As society becomes influenced increasingly by communications delivered in a visual form, so we, the consumers, require tools, more than ever, to engage with the work.

Read more less

Stuart Franklin (*1956 in London), a member of Magnum Photos and a geographer, travels around the world as a photojournalist, capturing historical events—from the massacre at Tiananmen Square to the Intifada—on film. But a trip to the region of Møre og Romsdal on Norway’s west coast prompted him to pause: Franklin bought a cottage by a lake on the island of Otrøya, spending a great deal of time there over the next two and a half years. Narcissus documents his experience in this remote place, which led to a deeper understanding and sensitivity for the abundance around him in an environment that at first seemed barren. These very tranquil, contemplative, and introverted landscape photographs time and again seek references to human beings—a path, a chopping block in a far corner of the property, the reflection of the silhouette of a mountain in a lake that seems to melt into a human portrait. An urbanite encounters a small, special piece of nature and sees his own reflection in it.

Read more less