Putting Photographs on Pages. On Photo Editing, Part I

Any image of a life event, experience, or object that becomes part of a book does so through its transformation into a photographically based file, even when the image has been created by computational procedures and is not photographic in its origin, but only in its technical condition of reproduction. Any book that includes images is, by a primary technical principle, a book containing photographs.

A great many books published around the world include images, although there are no statistics to confirm this, and at this point, such data would be nearly impossible to compile. These books, however, are so diverse that it is difficult to classify them according to the place and role photography occupies within them. As a starting point, I propose a simple and functional distinction, dividing them into two broad groups: one in which the image plays a secondary role, functioning primarily as an illustration of the text; and another in which the image constitutes the central axis of the discourse, while the word—the text—serves only to support its primary function.

At this point, a general consideration is in order. Since we are speaking about photo editing, one might argue that, for the first group, the work of a highly skilled editor—someone who combines expertise in handling textual materials with the visual training required to manage illustrations—may be sufficient. Today, however, when images are numerous and play a significant role in a book, it is increasingly common to engage a dedicated image editor to work alongside the text editor and, of course, the author.

For the second group, by contrast, the role of the image editor is not optional—it is essential. In image-based books, photographs must do more than accompany one another: they must relate to one another and interact, and ultimately articulate a structured field of ideas, emotions, and, to varying degrees, knowledge about the world. To achieve this purpose, it is necessary to develop a kind of work that combines sensitivity with expertise in handling images as devices for shaping a discourse—conceptual or narrative—terms that, although not always, are often interconnected in image-based books.

The notion of discourse has historically been tied to writing, but it is used here—with respect to the second group—to describe the capacity of images to generate meaning through their arrangement. When images are organized into a consecutive, continuous sequence, they invite the viewer to make inferences. In this sense, the defining features of discourse emerge visually: sequentiality (whether explicit or implicit); relationships between images that make them mutually dependent; the construction of meaning over time, as a progression; and, finally, the active participation of the viewer, who “reads” the images as if engaging with an essay or a narrative.

All of the above lies at the foundation of artists’ books, including photographic books in strict sense. We will return to this in due course.

(To be continued)