Photographs in Place Writing

What do they add?

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In the days before the invention of photography, sketch drawings, miniature paintings, and paper-cut silhouettes of a person’s profile could be made as a reminder of how a person looked. These portraits kept people alive in the imagination. For wealthy folks, large-scale artworks would be commissioned for hanging on the walls of grand houses. And, for those who wanted such things, a plaster cast could be taken of the dead person’s face—a death mask. Today, we can listen to voices and see moving images and, in the not too distant future, a combination of artificial intelligence and holography may allow tactile representations and we’ll be able to not only see and hear our loved ones, but also physically feel their presence.

Images in Place Writing

Photography is a format we rely on today for transmitting information and documenting events, and it’s a dominant trope of contemporary place writing. I included photographs in my PhD thesis on Place Writing; they invite readers to the specific locations I mention, and show the objects I refer to in the text. At first, I didn’t think I would include these images in the final creative work because I felt it was the quality of the writing that was all-important, and I wanted to demonstrate my command of words. I took the photos on my phone as aide memoires, and I include a few here for you to see because they show how much of an amateur I am at photography and how very ordinary the subjects. For me, the purpose was simply to record a moment in time when I stopped to notice and smile, or listen, or sniff the air. And there is always a chance I might see something in the photograph later that I didn’t notice at the time.

It was suggested that I embed some of my photos in my creative writing, and I realised that they could have a positive effect on readers by immersing them further into the world I was describing in words. Images break up the text and invite readers to pause. And, by sharing what I saw, readers gain further insight into what is relevant and special to me. For instance, if I had taken a photo of the buds on a tree rather than the whole tree, simply because the buds made an impression on me, at that time, in that place, readers would have the opportunity to appreciate them in a way that is multi-dimensional—through my words, yes, but also from the image, and from what that image prompts in the readers’ imagination and in their ability to recall events or circumstances that might relate to the image.

Since my research is not a scientific study subject to rigorous analysis, I made no attempt to standardise my photographic images. For writer-photographers in creative non-fiction a variety of perspectives can work well but all this is dependent on the subject matter of course. I had to consider how to present my photographs, however, especially whether or not to caption them. When words sit next to an image they immediately influence the way that image is received by the reader. Being conscious of this, I decided to caption with extreme brevity in my thesis although there is a trend for the complete absence of captions in creative non-fiction Place Writing, which leaves readers wondering ‘why?’ a little too often I think.

A single photograph cannot tell a story but it does invite the viewer to create one. A series of photographs, however, can provide a narrative; several images in series can tell a story through a visual and temporal landscape. Since my thesis is a digital file I could include colour photos but I’ve noticed many books contain black and white images, a choice which may have a lot to do with the economies required of the publishing process. Monochrome pictures tend to appear more seductive somehow. And when they have no captions or labels such images might assume the importance of visual art. They almost float inside the text as enigmas with spiritual intangibility.

I’ve always thought that truth is inherent in a photograph, especially when they accompany text in a work of creative non-fiction—after all, aren’t they evidence of fact? But I’ve found, through my own reading, that photographs are as untrustworthy as an unreliable narrator in fiction. I’m thinking particularly of W. G. Sebald’s tendency to include caption-less monochrome images in his books. The originals were photocopied and re-copied to the point that over-manipulation left them fuzzy, and readers are often puzzled by them. Visual information is seen and read in a more contemplative timespan to text. Photographs can inform and provide different angles on a situation, but they can also mislead. Should we, as writers, force readers to think more deeply about our photographs as carriers of information? Do we wish to present them as perplexing and slightly eery adjuncts to our words?

• Most of us include images in our writing on Substack, but do you use them for other work, outside of this platform? If so, how?

• As a reader, do you find photographs useful or distracting?

• What do you think about black and white photographs?

• And where do you like to see them in relation to the text?

I look forward to chatting with you in the comments!

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Credits & Links:

Photos are my own.

You may wish to read a post I made of a walk I took last August which is illustrated with photographs: Milestones.