Photography, Narrative, Time
Photography, Narrative, Time (Book)
Imaging our Forensic Imagination
Greg Battye focuses on the storytelling power of a single image by providing a wide-ranging account of the narrative properties of photographs. He applies contemporary research and theories to the analysis of photographs, using forensic photographs to argue for the centrality of the perception and representation of time in photographic narrativity.
Edition
Providing a wide-ranging account of the narrative properties of photographs, Greg Battye focuses on the storytelling power of a single image, rather than the sequence. Drawing on ideas from painting, drawing, film, video and multimedia, he applies contemporary research and theories drawn from cognitive science and psychology to the analysis of photographs. Using genuine forensic photographs of crime scenes and accidents, the book mines human drama and historical and sociological authenticity to argue for the centrality of the perception and representation of time in photographic narrativity.
Greg Batye is professor in the Faculty of Arts and Design at the University of Canberra, Australia.
Introduction
Chapter 1: A Different Kind of Look: Picturing Narrative
Chapter 2: What Narrative Is
Chapter 3: Made for Each Other: People and Photography
Chapter 4: Time
Chapter 5: The Eternity of a Moment: Evidence
Chapter 6: A Cognitive Turn
Chapter 7: Scripts and Schemata
Chapter 8: Possible Worlds
Postscript
'For anyone interested in more than photography – particularly in comprehending its strange hold over us as an activity both for taking and viewing images – this absorbing book will both expand your understanding of the medium and provide you with fresh insights from latest research'
'Battye has provided the photographic art or craft (or both) with staunch intellectual support, offering convincing evidence or the photo’s ability to imply much more than initially meets the eye.'
Battye’s great accomplishment in this volume is certainly the theoretically sound location of photographs within a theoretical framework of narrative.'
Greg Battye’s timely new book provides a concise and insightful over- view of Anglophone theoretical writing about still photography. He is sensitive to the many different kinds of photograph and to the ‘discourses’ that envelop them in today’s academy, but he is as refreshingly enthusiastic about everyday snap-shots and ephemera as he is about more deliberate, professional image- making.'
