Sensory Experience
Some photographers have tried to evoke a sense of smell, taste or touch in their work. Images of hands by Ashvini Ray often exaggerate their tactile qualities. Colour photographs by Joel Meyerowitz explore how the temperature of space might be suggested visually. Work produced by Robert Adams can allude to ambient sounds and noises. Respond in your own way, making reference to appropriate work by others.
Definitions
Sensory: relating to sensation or the physical senses; transmitted or perceived by the senses. Connected with the physical senses of touch, smell, taste, hearing, and sight.
Experience: a particular instance of personally encountering or undergoing something: an event or occurrence which leaves an impression on someone.
Sense: a faculty by which the body perceives an external stimulus; one of the faculties of sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch.
Smell: the faculty or power of perceiving odours or scents by means of the organs in the nose.
Taste: the sensation of flavour perceived in the mouth and throat on contact with a substance.
Touch: the faculty of perception through physical contact, especially with the fingers.
Hearing: the faculty of perceiving sounds.
Sight: the faculty or power of seeing.
Tactile: perceptible by touch or apparently so; tangible.
Evoke: bring or recall (a feeling, memory, or image) to the conscious mind.
Sensory Image
The image shows that sensory is that relating to the physical senses
of touch, smell, taste, hearing, and sight.
Sight
This image focus on what the man is looking at so highlights the sensation of sight.
Smell
The young girl is holding the flower up towards her nose so she can use her sense of smell to know the flower's fragrance.
Taste
This image shows the woman sticking out her tongue to taste the kiwi fruit.
Touch
This person is running their fingers through the top of the stalks of the crop of barley and feeling the sensation of touch.
Hearing
By cupping her hand against her ear to better hear something, this makes the image focus on the sensation of hearing.
Joel Meyerowitz
Joel Meyerowitz was born in New York USA in 1938 and started off working as a painter after studying art history in graduate school. However in 1962 after meeting Robert Franks and being inspired by his work he decided to change his career to photography. Meyerowitz is best known for his street photography work but also takes landscape and portrait images. He was a pioneer in using colour in his work at a time when capturing images in black and white was the dominant and accepted mode. His first book ‘Cape Light’ 1978 was particularly influential in breaking down resistance to using colour in ‘art form’ photography to making it universally accepted. In addition to Robert Franks, his work has also been influenced by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Gary Winogrand. Over his long career, he has published numerous books including ‘Wild Flowers’ 1983, ‘Redheads’ 1991 and ‘Legacy: The Preservation of Wilderness in New York City Parks’ 2009. He was also the only photographer allowed unrestricted access to ground zero following 9/11 in order to create an archive of the destruction and recovery.
Meyerowitz chose to use colour film as he felt it was more descriptive of life. By this, he did not just mean the factual correctness of the frame’s contents but ‘the sensation I get from things—their surface and color—my memory of them in other conditions as well as their connotative qualities. Colour plays itself out along a richer band of feelings—more wavelengths, more radiance, more sensation.’ Meyerowitz is a master of using his skill and understanding of working with colour to capture images that convey the atmosphere in a scene and evoke sensations in the viewer. This is particularly so with his ‘Cape Light’ series of images which he took while at Cape Cod, which is a sand bar that stretches 60 miles out to sea near Boston. In this location far from any atmospheric pollution, he felt the quality of light was explosive compared to what he had seen on land. He spent time capturing the different variations in the way the horizon would change on different days and during different seasons. He was interested in the scale in the scene, how the expansive body of water meets with the horizon, and then continues with the sky beyond this, and particularly studied the various ways light can fill the vast volumes of space there and the variety in this. His work visually captures a feel of the temperature of the particular day and the conditions, providing the audience with a sensation of being there and physically sharing the experience.
This image is of the porch of a house on the beach at Cape Cod looking out towards the sea. The perspective of the photo has been taken looking out from a shadowed position nearer to the house and looking through and above the white railing that surrounds the porch. It is obvious that a thunderstorm is in progress as on the right of the frame a bolt of lightning connects the sky to the sea. The expanse of sea and sky appears dark while a light is on within the house and this has high-lit a window on the left of the frame and throws light on to part of the wooden porch floor.
In this image using his skill with composing images, Meyerowitz has captured the atmosphere of the landscape at this moment. The converging line of the porches handrail leads the viewer’s eye towards the vast expanse of dark blue/grey ocean and rain cloud saturated sky that is visible from the porch. This view dominates the image and is framed in sections by the posts of the porch. These posts interrupt your view as your eye travels along the handrail, making you pause and really look out towards the horizon as you go along. The house appears to be trapped surrounded by a vast expanse of space in which a miserable storm is taking place. The dreariness of the boundless ocean stretches out as far as the eye can see in front of you, eventually disappearing into the horizon and meeting the equally dismal sky. The visual way Meyerowitz has presented this creates an atmosphere which makes me feel the sensation of the cold harsh temperature there. The dark gloomy cold colours of the ocean and the sky combined with the fierceness of the lightning bolt help create a visual image that creates the sensation of foreboding and this too sends a shiver down my spine, adding to the sensation of feeling cold. This also combined with the feeling that the photographer is hiding further back near the house as if trying to take refuge from the elements. Then as I look at the rest of the image the light from the house’s window catches my eye and it provides a contrast to the stormy scene as it has warm light colours and looks inviting and cosy. This contrast makes the image more dramatic and highlights the feeling of openness and cold outside compared to the small warm interior of the house. I would have preferred in the image if the door had been shut as it creates a large intrusive barrier in the middle of the frame which focuses attention away from the scene. Having the two divergent atmospheres creates a juxtaposition, the warm room and the cold ocean, which emphasizes the intensity of the contrast. This makes me feel the coldness of the temperature in such an isolated place surrounded by endless space only filled with chilled ocean and bleak sky feel even more intense and real.
This image is of the same porch overlooking the same sea area as above but during a different season and the contrast in the atmosphere created is huge. In this image, however, the angle it is taken at is more towards the edge of the porch rail, which again frames the scene and focuses attention on the vast space in front of you. Unlike the previous image, you do not feel as though you are hiding from the elements rather you are actively being pulled towards them. The calming horizontal line of the horizon combines with the relaxing blue coloured variations in the ocean and sky helping to create a sensation of relaxation and comfort. The texture of the ocean looks calm and flat, except from a few gentle wave ripples near the shore and this too adds to the tranquil feeling. The sun is also shining as can be seen from the railings shadows as well as the light intensity in the scene and this adds to the perception of feeling warm and relaxed. The image is dominated by the sea and sky as they occupy a large percentage of the frame, in doing this Meyerowitz has accentuate the effect of this endless space in front of you, to draw you into the image and feel immersed in its vastness so that you perceive you are there in the scene and experiencing the physical elements there such as the warm temperature in the above image.
Joel Meyerowitz is an excellent photographer to take inspiration from for this exam paper as his images stimulate the senses and create a connection between the visual aspect of the image and the physical sensations evoked by them. His use of colour is particularly skilful and he has developed the use of this medium since pioneering its use before it was generally accepted. By creating his images with a more realistic look and capturing more detail he allows viewers to connect more with the images. They remember associations with them and that evokes feelings, including the physical perception of how your senses were evoked by the experience. In his Cape Light images above he has also used the visual perception of space to convey associations with temperature, as I have outlined above. Other images he has taken use the space that can be seen through open doors and corridors to draw the viewer into the image and immerse them in the scene so that it is more intense and evokes the physical sensations of being there such as feeling the warmth or coolness of the location or the feel of the wind, brightness of the sun.
Ashvini Ray
Ashvini Ray was born in Sydney, Australia in 1990 and completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture, Performance and Installation at Sydney University in 2011. She has created a number of photographic series including The Untitled Series 2010, Amorphous 2011, Ordered Disorder 2013 and Embryology 2014. She now lives and works in Berlin in Germany.
In her images The Untitled Series 2010, Ray has taken close up images of structural elements of the human form. Her black and white images have an abstract quality, and in many of them, it is not immediately obvious which part of the body she is focusing on or even that it is a person’s skin that she has captured. Using her unusual perspectives to disguise her objects she allows viewers to focus on the tactile elements of her images. Such as the soft round textures and the taut sculptured forms and by presenting her images in black and white she enables the viewers to focus more on these elements by removing the distraction of colour.
Her close-up images capture the beauty and detail in how we are made and this makes the viewer take the time to think about something that we often overlook as it is omnipresent and is often disregarded by our minds. She facilitates us to feel the physical landscape of our skin and body. Her images capture the beauty and intricate patterns and tactile aspects of our skin and stimulate our physical perception of it. By intently focusing on our skin and bodies as a physical art form to be admired and studied this stimulates our senses of how our body and particularly our skin feels to the touch and to look at. Her images capture various perspectives of ourselves and highlight that this is what we are essentially made of. In doing this she makes us contemplate about the different sensations and textures of our skin and how this can vary and be adapted and so takes us on a sensory experience with our own skin.
In this image, Ray has captured a close up of a person’s left ear. The black and white image has been closely cropped to focus attention on the structural parts of the centre of the ear. It captures the soft curves of cartilage that give the ear its form and how they encircle the hole at the centre to allow the sound to be channelled towards it. Also how the smooth surface is covered in small dowdy hairs. The high detail and the three-dimensional feel of the image make you feel as though you could reach out and touch the ear and feel the softness of the tiny hairs with your finger.
This image is of the centre of a person’s palm. It captures the base and lower part of the digits of several of their fingers and their thumb. I find that the most interesting part of this image is the pattern and texture of the skin that is captured. The skin is completely covered with delicate swirling fingerprint lines and then on top of this, there are numerous intersecting crisscrossed lines created from the folding of the skin. Also, the way the palm is being held with the thumb slightly raised allows the light to create high-lit and shaded areas that help accentuate the three dimensional quality of the image. This allows viewers to not only visually see the palm in close detail but also feel as though they could touch it too.
Ashvini Ray's work focuses on the nature and appreciation of beauty, her images capturing in abstract form the detail in natural and man-made materials. Images such as those in her 'Untitled' Series discussed above capture the beauty and tactile aspect of our skin and so stimulate our perception of it. By focusing so intently on the various different textures on individual parts of the body without it being clear which part or that it is even skin this stimulates our perception of how the texture of the material feels to touch. Her work, therefore, is an excellent source for me to research and analyse in order to gain inspiration for creating my own images with a tactile feel.
Robert Adams
Robert Adams was born in New Jersey USA in 1937 after being unwell as a young child he went on to study English Literature at the University of Redlands in California, eventually going on to achieve a PhD. While pursuing a career in teaching his love of the landscape, developed over his childhood, prompted him to take up photography to try to capture its inherent beauty. He later moved to working part-time to have more time taking images and in 1970 he turned to photography full time. Other photographers who have influenced his work include Carleton Watkins, William Henry Jackson and Timothy O'Sullivan, as well as those inspiring him to voice social concerns such as Lewis Hine and Ansel Adams.
Adams had a love of nature and his work focused on capturing landscape images however he was concerned with the changes he was seeing in it and the destruction of areas where he had played as a child. He then began documenting the landscape as he saw it, capturing images with the urbanization and man-made creations in them such as the power lines, highways and gas stations. He captured more honest images that the photographer who just capturing the snowy peak of mountains, and ignored the highway running alongside it. Adams black and white images capture how the beauty of the landscape is still there yet it has been forever changed by the actions of man. His images send a message to look at what we are doing as we are slowly destroying our landscape and must change our ways. Adams work has been published in many photographic books including and also 2 essays, ‘Beauty in Photography: Essays in Defence of Traditional Values’ (1989) and ‘Why People Photograph’ (1994)
This image is from Adams ‘Summer Nights Walking’ series of images it is taken in Longmont Colorado in 1981. The image was taken at night and shows an amusement park with a large brightly lit up Ferris wheel positioned in the foreground. In the background, a mountain range can be seen but it is partly obscured by the dark clouds that are settling over the scene.
This image captures memories of the fun and excitement of going to an amusement park. The tilted angle of the Ferris wheel brings memories of the happy carefree time spent at such carnivals where we enjoyed the thrill of such rides. By taking the image in black and white and at night the distraction of colour and the small details are lost. This allows the viewer to focus on the carnival experience itself rather than be caught up analysing the details. This allows you to remember the sounds and smells of the experience. The sound, in particular, would be the first to be recalled with the Ferris wheel being the focus of the image. This would bring to mind the shrieking of young girls as they spun and were tipped around in it. By incorporating the perception of movement in this image Adams is helping to convey the expected noise that would accompany this at a fairground as well as increase the perception of the excitement of the ride. Other noises you could imagine would be from the music from some of the rides, people talking and laughing, and the noise of the rides themselves. There is, however, a warning in the image. Adams has taken it when there is a dark cloud moving in on the park. This could suggest that he is warning of the consequences of destroying the beauty of the landscape. As the beauty of the natural light from the sun as it sets is obscured by the flashing bright artificial lights of the amusement park and the peaceful tranquillity of the night ruined by the noisy rides.
This image is from Adams ‘Summer Nights’ collection which was taken along the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains (1976-1982). They capture the peace of a summer evening as you walk through urban centres with the light fading. As Adams said about the series “on summer nights, when the sounds outside, after we call in children and close garage doors, are small—the whir of moths, the snap of a stick.” These images evoke memories of the peaceful sounds that hang in the air on a summer evening. Such as hushed people’s voices, chirping songs of grasshoppers rubbing their wings together, rustling wind through leaves on trees, peoples footsteps and nocturnal animals scurrying about. All of these sounds seem amplified because of the relative silence and the more serene atmosphere that hangs in the air.
The image captures a view that someone might see as they walk along a residential street late in the evening. In the image it is dark and a street light or car headlights have lit up the side of the house as well as the tree next to it. This has caused the leaves to cast their shadow onto the side of the light coloured house. When I look at this image they evoke memories of the sounds I expect to hear. With the leaves occupying such a prominent focal position in the image then I firstly think of the sound of the wind blowing through the tree's branches and making the leaves brush together making a rustling sound. Other noises I think of are the occasional car travelling by me and peoples hushed voices or even voices coming from inside the houses you pass.
Roberts Adams is a good photographer for me to research and study for this exam paper. This is because his black and white images suggest to viewers physical sensory aspects in the image. The lighting and composition of the landscapes evoke memories in the viewers of the sound and noises that would be expected and anticipated to be heard. The lack of distracting colour helps to focus the viewer’s attention on the overall scene rather than on specific details and this aids the viewer in creating these associations.
Techniques I intend to use
Animated Gif
Narrow depth of field
Freeze frame
Motion blur
Composite images
Texture/Pattern/Shapes/Colour
Black and white images
Close up
Cropped Images
Macro lens images
Reflection and Framing
Leading lines
Wide angle Close up
Use of perspective
Infrared photography
