Buzz Words

I’ve been having an ongoing dialogue/running joke with one of my professors, David Hilliard, about the certain ‘big words’ and buzzwords that people tend to use when talking about art. When I hear a good word, I write it down in an ever-growing list at the back of my notebook.

Sometimes people can use these words effectively to convey a complicated idea and delineate the genesis of the idea that eventually led to the photograph, and sometimes these words are just tossed about for pretentious effect. Like most things, a lot of it is about the context and audience and whether or not the words make sense and convey a cohesive thought to your average viewer. This same concept can be applied to analyzing the photograph itself: to which type of viewer will this photo speak the most clearly? Will your average viewer ‘get’ it? What role must the photo play—should it be understand by your average, random viewer? Does it matter how highly specialized (or not) it is? In his eight rules for writing fiction, Kurt Vonnegut's #1 is: Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

Some of my favorite words that David uses are action verbs: inform, reference, challenge. They are words that analyze the bones and structure of a photograph rather than tossing around weak, dictionary-inducing words that are more likely to alienate than enlighten your audience.

All of this ties into the concept that photography can be (and is) a certain language and can be approached as such. What I like about David's work is how he uses the language of photography to speak in complete sentences across multiple frames. Each frame can be considered a clause of a sentence, and is essential to the final comprehension of the essence of the sentence.

One of my favorite authors, Hunter S. Thompson, a producer of many prolific bodies of work, would often type out entire novels of authors he admired in order to analyze their sentence structure and flow. He also knew that finding precisely the right word for the right situation was paramount and a supreme achievement. The photographic translation of both of these concepts should be a consideration of all serious students of the lens.

Labels: action words, buzz words, david hilliard, language

posted by Megan Bigelow @ 12:42 AM