But sometimes everything I write
with the threadbare art of my eye
seems a snapshot,
lurid, rapid, garish, grouped,
heightened from life,
yet paralyzed by fact.
(Lowell, 1977)
As an exercise of getting to the crux of the analogous relationship between photography and poetry, it is interesting to read how poets have long tried to define their trade. In his 1840 essay; In Defence of Poetry, Percy Bysshe Shelly (2011) describes poetry as ’the expression of the imagination: and poetry is connate with the origin of man. Man is an instrument over which a series of external and internal impressions are driven’. He contends that those who are in excess of language are naturally poets. American Sculptor Horatio Greenough (1855:89) goes further and has described Poems as; ‘A mode of composition in which the highest degree of attention is bestowed upon all the parts consistent with the requisite degree of attention to the whole… poetry is the natural utterance of the more elevated or tender sensibilities and sentiments of the mind’. Replace ‘poet’ and ‘poetry’ in any of the above definitions,
The similarities and sway between poetry and painting are historical and well documented; Horace made a comparison between the appreciation of painting and poetry observing that; ‘just as [some] paintings can be enjoyed with a close viewing while others necessitate greater distance, so too should one approach a poem with a close reading or with a broader eye to the piece as a whole’ (Harvey, 2002). It was also Horace in his Ars Poetica, who introduced the term ‘ut picture poesis’ (Trimpi, 1973:1). Other philosophers have also offered, what are now well established, opinions on the matter. Plato also understood pictures, like poems ‘appear different when viewed from close up rather than far away’ (Barkan, 2013:42). In addition, Socrates observed that painting and poetry were often used by others as tools to get to the truth of a subject, but he saw the disciplines as mere mimetic representations of the truth that held little value (Barkan, 2013:38-39) and would be pleased to see poets banished (Leitch; et al, 2001:121). Aristotle on the other hand, read between the lines, and saw the art forms as a means to get closer to the truth of the matter (Harvey, 2002).
By fixating on the competitive parallels of these two sister arts, we put ourselves in danger of creating a bond where one can be reliant on the other for success. All of these observations and definitions in this research chapter reinforce the similarities of poetry and photography. Their objectives are similar but autonomous, both are defined in some quarters, by an ambition that attempts to interpret the essence of being. The two arts focus on the stimulation of emotion in response to engagement with non-literal and often abstract work. ‘All the same, the impulse to “interartistic comparison” cannot be totally pointless. It must correspond to some sort of authentic critical desire to connect different aspects and dimensions of cultural experience’ (Mitchell, 1994:87).
Comparing photography to poetry may seem a little counter intuitive, as on the face of it the former manifests visually and the latter expressing itself using verbal language. But there is validity to doing so as ‘all media are mixed media, and all representations are heterogeneous; there are no “purely” visual or verbal arts’ (Mitchell,1994:5). We see this demonstrated with photography; photographs are seldom presented without some form of underpinning copy (Burgin, 1986:51) and such images as subject to ekphrasis in literary texts. Thus, the relationship between photography and poetry can also be framed as a relationship between photography and language, and is sustained by questioning, first; whether the limit of language can be found at the feet of an image? And secondly, as Leonard Barkan has observed in his book Mute Poetry, Speaking Pictures, can language ever encompass the image by ‘giving voice to a mute art object’ (Mitchell, 1994:153)? ‘Every occasion when a (necessarily mute) human representation is celebrated for its speaking potential amounts to a reminder not only of the triumph achieved by the particular work under discussion but also of the devastating limitation under which all the visual arts operate’ (Barkan, 2013:12). Barkan writes from a similar position to that of Roland Barthes, on that supposes the communicative experience of art is defined by language, as I have previously stated in my post Limbic Resonance, this might not be the case. If correct this opens up new potentiality for all of the visual arts.