Photographs do not 'tell' but 'are made to tell'—Reading notes on Sayoko Osawa's 'Photography and Narrative: Operations of Transformation'
Bibliographic Information
Title of Essay: 'Photography and Narrative: Operations of Transformation'
Author: Sayoko Osawa
Source: Included in 'Book 2 (System of Culture)'
Dialogue (Friendly: pointing to the purpose and overview)
Hosaka: To read Jeff Wall, I first want to read the Osawa essay in SoC. If I jump straight into Wall, I feel like I'll slip on the hardness of the language.
ChatGPT: Yeah, that's a great order. The Osawa essay organizes 'how photography is transformed into narrative' from both the perspective of how works are created and how appreciation occurs.
Hosaka: What I want to know isn't the 'content' of the narrative, but the conditions that 'make it tell'.
ChatGPT: OK. Let's narrow the purpose of this reading note to one thing.
—Mapping what happens (the bundle of operations) when a photograph does not 'tell' but 'is made to tell'.
With that map in hand, we'll move on to Wall.
Strict Summary (100% Anchor: Argument/Evidence/Premise/Implication/Issue)
Argument
The relationship between photography and narrative should not be understood as 'whether a photograph possesses a narrative,' but as an **operation of transformation** where the photograph is converted into a narrative.
This operation is not completed by shooting alone. Within a chain of reference/composition/presentation/reception, a 'connection (narrativization)' is triggered on the viewer's side.
The System of Culture series experiments with this 'making it tell' operation in different ways for each work, expanding the vocabulary of photographic expression.
Evidence
In the introduction, a horizon is established where, after conceptual art, photography enters the art sphere with a 'usage' different from modernism, is given the function of posing 'questions' to photography, and meaning-making is distributed to the viewer's side.
Building on the concepts presented by Jeff Wall ('rethinking reportage,' 'amateurization'), it is shown that photography transitions to other forms in a place where the myth of 'evidence of truth' and the myth of 'not being so' are crossed.
In the analysis of SoC works, it is concretized that through reference (film/painting/images on the internet), experimental shooting, composition of fragments, and forms of presentation, the viewer is invited to search for potential narratives and themes.
In the conclusion, SoC is positioned as an artist exploring the 'expansion of the vocabulary of photographic expression'.
Premise
'Narrative' is not fixed inside the photograph, but can be generated within the act of appreciation (connecting/supplementing/searching).
Photography cannot be captured by the dichotomy of truth/fiction, but operates on the intersection of the two.
A work is not just the result of shooting, but also a design of a process that includes reference, composition, and presentation.
Implications
The question of reading changes: Instead of 'What does this photo say?', the focus shifts to 'By what operations am I being made to speak?'
The question of creation also changes: Beyond just shooting, the selection of references, composition, and the format of exhibition or publication become important as 'designing the conditions for narrative generation.'
Moving from 'guessing the author's intent' to a reading that traces the 'design of the circuit (how it is activated).'
Points of Contention
Does the 'editability (connection)' entrusted to the viewer open up freedom, or is it a form of control through reconnection to institutions (art/exhibition/distribution)?
How far can 'playing with references' be opened up? Is a frame inevitable?
For whose benefit is the design of conditions for narrative generation (who gains, and who is excluded)?
Reflections (30%: 30 assimilation/70 alienation, without overwriting the summary)
If one reads this essay as 'narratology,' one will likely misread it.
This is because narrative is treated not as the 'content of the work,' but as an impulse for connection occurring on my side of the viewer.
When looking at a photograph, I arbitrarily fill in the context, create reasons, search for themes, and imagine the author's intent.
Narrative occurs at that very moment.
Therefore, the interest of this essay leans more toward 'what has been activated' than 'what is depicted.'
The series analysis of System of Culture does not leave that 'activation' to chance.
By bundling, composing, and presenting references, it causes a 'connection' to occur within the viewer.
Here, the photograph appears not as evidence of an event, but as a design of conditions that triggers the viewer's narrativization.
However, I do not want to simply affirm this 'making them speak.'
Making them speak increases freedom, but it also guides the form of the narrative.
There is a danger of unconsciously steering toward a 'freedom' that is convenient for art institutions and circuits of distribution.
Here, I want to proceed while leaving ambiguous for whom the term 'useful' serves.
(Rather than concluding by reclaiming it as a technique of reading, I want to reserve judgment on whose power the 'design of conditions' strengthens.)
Basting → Transition (Do not close with a conclusion: To Jeff Wall)
Basting: Osawa's paper provides a blueprint where photographs do not 'possess' a narrative, but are transformed into one by triggering a 'connection' in the viewer through a chain of reference, composition, presentation, and reception. System of Culture experiments with these operations of transformation in each series, expanding the vocabulary of photographic expression.
Transition: Next, I will move to Jeff Wall's 'Marks of Indifference.' What I want to verify there is the discrepancy of whether the viewer's editability is 'freedom' or if it is institutionalized as 'marks of indifference.' With what concepts will Wall dissect what Osawa showed as 'operations of making them speak'?
Appendix (Combined)
Bibliography
Sayoko Osawa, 'Photography and Narrative: Operations of Transformation,' in Book 2 (System of Culture)
Yoshiaki Kai (ed./trans.), Theories of Photography (Getsuyosha)
Jeff Wall, 'Marks of Indifference: Aspects of Photography in, or as, Conceptual Art' (translated by Yoshiaki Kai, included in the same volume)
Hashtags (20)
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