is allegory dead?

[jp]

I kinda like flickr for the vast variety of photography (while at the same time hating it for their needless technical tampering). There's groups for everything and photos of everything.

The topic of allegory on flickr is pretty meager there though. There aren't any lively groups for allegory. Searching tags for allegory finds mostly historical paintings and mis-tagged or documentary images. I don't think it's flickr's problem, but more representative of the photography medium in general.

Has the notion of expressing using allegory and photography died off? Is allegory a dead classical and victorian anachronism? I know one living photographer (at least) who likes to employ allegory, perhaps because he's inspired by painters that have done that.

Is it a dying anachronism because we have no cultural/educational shared understanding of the classical/mythological/religious themes/symbolism that often fueled allegory in the past? Is it too "romantic" and uncool to employ a classical/religious allegory? Are artists trying so hard to be different they avoid any shared understand that is required for allegory? Or are we too modern inspired such that is primarily about composition rather than communication? Maybe I'm asking too many questions; just trying to get your brains in gear. I like art history and don't see much of the concept of allegory happening in common contemporary art photography. generic "I dress in black" angst isn't allegory.

[BetterSense]

Contemporary allegory would be perceived as kitsch. Serious art must be as content free as possible.

[Heroique]

I think you've raised an interesting topic!

You might want to define "allegory" in general terms, and why a photograph might be one – or work as one. For example, the literal image & the implied meaning; and why "allegory" is usually more "clear-cut" than a "symbol," which typically offers multiple meanings (not just principally a clearly intended one).

Your remark about the importance of common (cultural) ground between photographer and viewer is, I think, of paramount importance if allegory is going to work. Paul will be here soon with stimulating reasons about the meaningless of this so-called common ground, and why the viewer's experience should have nothing to do (and can have nothing to do) with the photographer's intensions for him, making traditional allegory impossible, and uninteresting anyway.

Me, I don't think allegory is dead in any artistic genre, but it has caught a nasty bout of the flu from the intellectual currents in our day and age. It will recover.

[jcoldslabs]

I think there are many reasons for the decline of allegory in art, some of which you touched on in your questions. I'd venture to guess that part of the historical appeal of allegory and metaphor in the arts was being able to approach concepts that were taboo or forbidden in an oblique way. These days it seems that nothing is off limits. Joel-Peter Witkin's photographic meditations on death, decay and mortality use real cadavers. Sally Mann photographed dead and rotting bodies at the "Body Farm." Tracey Emin's conceptual piece My Bed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Bed) used her actual bed and its authentic detritus, and Piss Christ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piss_christ) used real piss. In the past such literal depictions would have been seen as too direct or "uncreative" to be considered art.

I also believe there needs to be a shared cultural language in order for symbolism to work. If a photograph references something in order to make its point that few people are familiar with it likely will not find a wide audience or will not succeed on that level. I had a talk with Austin where he discussed the symbols and juxtapositions he creates in his work to convey meaning, but he is usually met with blank stares or ambivalence when he points this out to people.

This makes me wonder: are people using allegory less these days, or are we collectively more blind to it than ever before?

Jonathan

[Winger]

If you're looking simply for photos or groups with tag "allegory", my guess is that most people posting on flickr don't know to use that word. And a large number don't see double meanings in much of anything. Just think about how few people these days "get" puns.

[jp]

If Paul has some words, I'm game. I like discussion and mumbo jumbo too. Honestly allegory is not on my mind when I'm taking photos, but it's a strong method of expression in other areas of art and in the past, so I expected it to be more alive as an intention.

Jonathan, I think you've got a little bit of it with a preference for literal depictions "because we can". I think the taste for taboo can still be uncreative and being too direct comes across as if people want publicity more than expression. But there's more to it... I still think there's a wide array of applications remaining to use one non-literal representation to explain/communicate something that's hard to communicate being direct.

Obscure shared cultural language is alive and well in Internet memes, but that has a short shelf life and isn't particularly important or timeless or intergenerational, which is where people'd rather think art should be.

Jamie Wyeth's seven deadly sins paintings are contemporary paintings illustrating a nearly timeless idea, but with gulls not people. Sort of like how animal farm was known for the use of creatures instead of people. That's allegory.

http://ralstongallery.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Nature/G00000O2F26zgM9A/I0000S0rxTZASfE4 is a photo called brimstone, which makes one think about death without a fire and brimstone sermon.

As far as allegory relating to symbolism, I think symbolism is a tool which is often used to support allegory.
The Birth of Venus by Botticelli is loaded with symbolism that we don't use as a culture anymore. The shell as a vulva; we just use an actual photo of the body part. wind as spirit and life; we don't express that like that anymore. Those clues combine together in a thoughtful manner which is sometimes allegory. Elsewhere, crossing a river is allegorical for reaching an afterlife... Coming forth from the water is birth, in this Birth of Venus painting, in Christian baptism, and many ensuing uses of that remain allegorical.

Allegory is alive and well in movies, with themes which we can't tell if it's convenient recycling of timeless tales, or allegory in modern garb. Things like the monoliths in 2001 A space odyssey or much of The Matrix plot. More straight forward was the success of the Chronicles of Narnia film. This past winter, I described our snow situation as Narnia and a few people knew what I meant, but fewer still would know the allegory of what winter meant in that book/movie.

[Larry Gebhardt]

I don't know, I find there to be lot's of examples of allegory on Flicker (https://www.flickr.com/search/?q=Al+Gore). :) I'll see myself out.

[Brian C. Miller]

Interesting result from a Google search, Encyclopedia of nineteenth-century photography: A-I, index, Volume 1 (http://books.google.com/books?id=PJ8DHBay4_EC&pg=PA27&lpg=PA27&dq=photographic+allegory&source=bl&ots=ZR1YHg_PH5&sig=6Rzy440ICYFVyM6IRAHUmhHjx9c&hl=en&sa=X&ei=1hXRU-WSI4nWigLw1IH4Cw&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=photographic%20allegory&f=false), page 27. Nice article on allegory in photography.

Allegory is a concept with two parts. The first meaning is what is obviously presented, with something that evokes a second meaning through prior social, societal, and historical context. The allegory isn't a mere illustration, as it's meant to necessarily evoke something that has come before. It has to unfold over time, or be worked out by cues presented to the viewer. The allegory is like a shadow play, with characters in the foreground masking the shadows of something else in the background.

A photographic allegory isn't easy at all, unless it's been set up beforehand. For instance, I wouldn't expect someone to go out and do allegorical street photography. Allegories might be constructed later, but not likely in the actual act of making a street photograph. Using an allegory in landscape photography might be easier, but I can't think of any that I myself have made.

An effective allegory has to be carefully constructed. Consider, how would you condense The Lottery into a single photograph?

[Drew Wiley]

So now we can enjoy an endless debate over the difference between allegory, symbol, and metaphor. I don't see why any potential psychological or historical tool would be off limits. And if anything is momentarily below the surface, it's just a matter of time. Things run in cylces. But what constitutes a relevant tool kit will differ from generation to generation, according to their own cultural preconceptions. What is far more important is how skilfully things are done. That's the difference between kitch and something worth noting. But someone will always be pushing the envelope and trying to attract attention with some gimmick that has already been used long before, at least in principle.

[Brian C. Miller]

... That's the difference between kitch and something worth noting. But someone will always be pushing the envelope and trying to attract attention with some gimmick that has already been used long before, at least in principle.

Merriam-Webster, kitsch: "things ... that are of low quality and that many people find amusing and enjoyable"
Such as posting useless rants on Internet forums.

There's a difference between, "what the f--- is that," and allegory. Photography is so immediate, and perceived as immediate, that in the general context it's just not a conveyance for allegory. The first thing that's obvious about something that's an allegory is that the "obvious" subject isn't the subject at all. Was Animal Farm really about just a little slice of life on a farm? No, because there aren't any talking animals. And gee whiz, doesn't the story line sort of follow major things that have happened in the world at large? And something is uncomfortable about all of this...

jp498 didn't find any allegory on Flickr. Not even kitsch allegory. Before something can be done either well or badly, it has to be done at all.

[Drew Wiley]

Real world functional definition of kitch : 90% of what you encounter on the web or in commercial galleries.

[Toyon]

Contemporary allegory would be perceived as kitsch. Serious art must be as content free as possible.

Hahahahaha

[Heroique]

"...It has to unfold over time, or be worked out by cues presented to the viewer..."

This is a key challenge.

Naturally, it's more difficult for a static image than for a flowing literary narrative.

A famous literary example: The knight named Redcrosse in Edmund Spenser's The Fairie Queene (1590). The knight, as readers around here know, is an allegory for (Christian) holiness. The initial "cue" for this is his name, of course, but his actions over time make it all the more clear what he stands for in this justly famous Elizabethan epic of photographic vividness.

-----
Below, "The Red Cross Knight" (1793), by John Singleton Copley (National Gallery of Art, London). This is a scene from Spenser's The Fairie Queene – Redcrosse meeting two ladies who, like him, are also allegories – Faith and Hope. The "cues" are all there. It's a magnificent painting by one of America's greatest artists, but would Copley be laughed to scorn today?

[jcoldslabs]

For an allegory to succeed the subject depicted must clearly represent something other than the literal. This is difficult to do in such a representational medium as photography. Weston's "Pepper No. 30", while suggestive of a human form, is still just a pepper, and Adams' "Clearing Winter Storm" is...hold on...I know this one...wait, don't tell me....

J.

[Drew Wiley]

Nothing in a photograph is literal. It's all some kind of illusion standing for some psychological motive, even if that is only to make a buck, create a memory, or make a surveillance map. It a flat piece of paper or plastic or illuminated panel. Never the "real" world. Even if you program a satellite to take "random" serial shots, there's still an artificial emphasis programming the device to take a particular look at the world in light and texture. You don't need costumes and studio props to reinvent the world. You do it subconsciously every time you take a picture. So there is no such thing as "content free". Even if you take a cutesy shot of a chipmunk sitting on a Natl Park sign you have a staged motive. Even the chipmunk knows that. So prior to the chipmunk signing your model release, at least pay him with a cracker or peanut. He could care less about your picture itself.

[Nathan Potter]

Interesting result from a Google search, Encyclopedia of nineteenth-century photography: A-I, index, Volume 1 (http://books.google.com/books?id=PJ8DHBay4_EC&pg=PA27&lpg=PA27&dq=photographic+allegory&source=bl&ots=ZR1YHg_PH5&sig=6Rzy440ICYFVyM6IRAHUmhHjx9c&hl=en&sa=X&ei=1hXRU-WSI4nWigLw1IH4Cw&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=photographic%20allegory&f=false), page 27. Nice article on allegory in photography.

Allegory is a concept with two parts. The first meaning is what is obviously presented, with something that evokes a second meaning through prior social, societal, and historical context. The allegory isn't a mere illustration, as it's meant to necessarily evoke something that has come before. It has to unfold over time, or be worked out by cues presented to the viewer. The allegory is like a shadow play, with characters in the foreground masking the shadows of something else in the background.

A photographic allegory isn't easy at all, unless it's been set up beforehand. For instance, I wouldn't expect someone to go out and do allegorical street photography. Allegories might be constructed later, but not likely in the actual act of making a street photograph. Using an allegory in landscape photography might be easier, but I can't think of any that I myself have made.

An effective allegory has to be carefully constructed. Consider, how would you condense The Lottery into a single photograph?

I like this explanation. The image at hand is what we have to work with, with something else as a shadow in the foreground and background. What is outside of the actual image comes from the imagination of the viewer. Viewers don't always have the experience to contribute the allegory so it is difficult to execute such in a single photograph.

I tried to use this approach in the 1970s' in a series about war and violence as a result of the Vietnam war chaos. The intent was obvious at the time due to the widespread news of the carnage but I suppose could easily be missed now (although maybe not). I'll post the image below:

https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2928/14550042629_d457899fd4_c.jpg (https://www.flickr.com/photos/argiolus/14550042629/)
VIO-1-74-07{BWO[t1 (https://www.flickr.com/photos/argiolus/14550042629/) by hypolimnas (https://www.flickr.com/people/argiolus/), on Flickr

Image is the result of target practice on a boy mannequin that I stumbled on in a gravel pit. Someone had placed the remains of the head on the hood of the bullet ridden pickup. Of course my intent at the time was to symbolize war type violence against humans (the shadow subject). Most viewers got the allegorical message. I may have posted this previously but can't find it.

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

[Brian C. Miller]

What I found amusing about Pepper No. 30 is that it was just a pepper to Weston. He was just playing with his food. His own comment, in part, was, "It has no psychological attributes, no human emotions are aroused ..." He never made any of his pepper series as an allegory for anything.

The problem is what people imagine and project onto an image. In Weston's case, it was all kinds of stuff, and he termed his peppers as being "libeled." The first thing that has to happen when someone looks at the photograph is to think, "It's not really about that, is it?" For literature, the first hint is that the story is fiction. For painting, it usually comes on like a freight train with the horns blaring, with visual cues like flying people and things like physics and gravity aren't especially important. The elements are placed so that it's unquestionably an allegory. It's not a case of, "this can be seen as an allegory," it's flat-out an allegory.

Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll, wrote Alice in Wonderland as a satire of mathematics. If Albert Einstein had written a book of fiction of what he thought of quantum physics and entanglement ("spooky action at a distance"), what might it have looked like?

When a photograph starts looking like a smoke trip, then 99.94% of the time it's a smoke trip. It's really not an allegory for anything. It just surreal or abstract for the sake of being surreal or abstract. There is no secondary meaning, other than to occupy blank space on the wall.

So back to the real problem, how to represent an allegory in a photograph.

[ROL]

https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2928/14550042629_d457899fd4_c.jpg (https://www.flickr.com/photos/argiolus/14550042629/)
VIO-1-74-07{BWO[t1 (https://www.flickr.com/photos/argiolus/14550042629/) by hypolimnas (https://www.flickr.com/people/argiolus/), on Flickr

The unfortunate resemblance to certain very recent eastern Ukraine incidents aside, and in deference to the subject of this thread, may I suggest a title for the work:


Al E. Gory, R.I.P. ? – ??

[Drew Wiley]

You sure got that one backwards, Brian. It wasn't just Diego Rivera who wiped his brow when he looked at those kinds of EW prints. Those things are reeking with
psychological tension. Otherwise, the peppers would be on the page of the weekly newpaper produce ad, not priceless collectibles. Maybe not allegory per se, but
certainly a reflection of something other than a mere vegetable with a nice sheen to it.

[jcoldslabs]

I would normally say that it is a mistake to confuse the artist's intent with the meaning of a work because each of us reacts to it in our own way. But in the case of an allegory the intent IS the meaning. Orwell didn't say, "Oh, I just wrote a puff piece for children about talking farm animals." His stated goal was to criticize Stalin's rise to power.

Jonathan

[Jac@stafford.net]

[...] Is it (allegory) a dying anachronism because we have no cultural/educational shared understanding of the classical/mythological/religious themes/symbolism that often fueled allegory in the past? Is it too "romantic" and uncool to employ a classical/religious allegory?

In my experience education, which some would call social reality indoctrination, plus one's desire to extend what's learned increases the likelihood of employing allegory in their life and work. Sometimes we call these people Artists. (Two of my younger brothers are that way. One is a scholar and critic, the other a game designer who employs his vast knowledge of ancient mythology.) People so motivated are rare. Among photographers who employ allegory I would add to those already mentioned Emmet Gowin, Teun Hocks, and Shana and Robert Parkeharrison. It is not important that we like or respect their work, but recognize it as allegorical.

It is easy to think that Western culture before photography had a richer imagination than we have today, but I don't believe it to be true or even possible. Art was certainly the domain of the privileged/mentored craftsman. Is it different today? I do not think so. People say that mechanically enabled image-making and the Internet has democratized art, but people have always done craftsmanship (now called art, for better or worse.)

Later when I can return to the keyboard I hope to discuss the concept of 'vividness' of popular media and how it has become inflated expectations, available heuristics.
.

[Brian C. Miller]

You sure got that one backwards, Brian.

Do you think that Weston deliberately misstated himself, i.e., lied his butt off? That his thought process towards the peppers was, "hey, this looks like a nekked babe! Gotta make me sum pics! Capsicum annuum, lay it on out for me! Whose yo daddy?"

I take Weston's statements as they are, and that people have projected what they thought onto them, like a Rorschach test. There is a difference between Weston's peppers and Orwell's Animal Farm. Animal Farm was meant as an allegory, and was banned in the U.S.S.R., Kenya, the U.A.E., and is still banned in North Korea and Cuba, and is censored in China. Weston's peppers weren't meant as an allegory.

It also doesn't make sense that Weston would use peppers as an allegory to represent the female nude, when he was also photographing real female nudes left and right.

[John Kasaian]

I think this is a successful allegorical photograph---
http://www.shorpy.com/node/18131

[Jac@stafford.net]

It also doesn't make sense that Weston would use peppers as an allegory to represent the female nude, when he was also photographing real female nudes left and right.

I thought it was the other way around. It was hard times and naked women were more available than peppers.

Seriously, each subject was a study of organic form. Analogy.

[Drew Wiley]

No... I wouldn't term Weston's still lifes as allegorical in the strict sense of that term. But they were certainly metaphorical for something very subliminal going on in
the back of his head. It's pretty damn obvious. His public disclaimer has no more bearing than when Georgia OKeefe made the same kind of disclaimer about her
distinctly steamy flower paintings. Perhaps allegory is the more deliberate or self-conscious mode of presentation, while a metaphor or "equivalent" or whatever can be downright subconscious or anywhere in between. But in many successful photographs it's still an important element. And a skilled illusionist doesn't show his hand.

[Brian C. Miller]

Precisely my point, Drew, the allegory has to stand apart from a projected metaphor. People consistently project what they like onto something. IIRC, there was a scene with Ingrid Bergman, that at the end of the movie she's standing at the bow of a ship. She asked the director, "What should I be thinking?" The director replied, "Nothing at all. The audience will project whatever they think is appropriate."

So therefore, it seems the vast majority of naughty-minded people project naughty thoughts onto vegetables and flowers.

For a photographic allegory to succeed, the elements have to smash through a misinterpretation of a metaphor like a Caterpillar D11 through a plastic playground set. There is no prose to spell out the allegory step by step. There may be a series of photographs, but there won't be very many. A one hour movie will use 86,400 frames, but the usual photographic series is pushing it at four. There's only so much wall space. If that movie were printed out onto 8x10s, the series would stretch for about 13-1/2 miles.

So: how would you create the photographic allegory of The Lottery?

[Drew Wiley]

Semantics, with a lot of shades of gray or grey, or greige. But to me personally, allegory implies something in either literary or visual media that has been deliberately choreographed, or edited and arranged to describe a premeditated story. ... like what Julia Cameron sometimes did with pre-Raphaelite themes. I distinguish this from a grab shot which mirrors a spontaneous mental impression, or even native subconscious reflex, like Steiglitz's equivalents or Weston's still lifes. I personally do a lot of the latter kind of photography, none of the former, but prefer things nuanced in such a manner that it's not instantly accessible like advertising photography of Wegman's dogs, for example. But this is just my take on the vocabulary itself. In other words, I truly doubt EW was trying to be deliberately horny when he set up a shot - it just came out that way, and not coincidentally. We all make our own kinds of rosarch blots - that other people tend to interpret these any number of ways, each in a different manner, is maybe evidence of a successful print.