{"id":245,"date":"2012-05-12T08:42:14","date_gmt":"2012-05-12T08:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ouritalianfarmhouse.com\/ourstory\/?p=245"},"modified":"2026-03-02T17:28:35","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T17:28:35","slug":"reflection-vs-representation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ouritalianfarmhouse.com\/ourstory\/2012\/05\/12\/reflection-vs-representation\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflection vs Representation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I don\u2019t suppose it\u2019s entirely an either\/or situation, or that the two are mutually exclusive, but lately it seems I write more to elucidate the photographs I shoot than to meditate on life here on the other side of the world.\u00a0 This comes as something of a surprise to me, as I\u2019ve never been a particularly good photographer.\u00a0 Jim and I have a great boxful of photos and snapshots from nearly three decades together, many of them overexposed, out of focus, poorly composed, or simply unrecognizeable to anyone who wasn\u2019t on the spot (and, after a number of years, not even to those of us who did happen to be there at the time).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I began writing these bulletins from this\nfaraway place, I included photos only as necessary for the sake of\nillustration.  Early on I wrote to\na friend, \u201cIf my words needed pictures, I wouldn\u2019t be much of a writer.\u201d  As the ratio of images to words has\nincreased, my impetus for writing has shifted from the internal to the external;\nthe source of my inspiration seems less insight than sight.  I am not entirely happy about this, and\nI couldn\u2019t tell you exactly why, but somehow I seem fundamentally to value\nreflection over representation. \nThe more photos I use, the less writerly I feel.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps because my last few posts recounted\nexcursions to local sites of interest, it seemed natural to amplify the words\nwith pictures.  I enjoy sharing our\ntravels with you, and photos can be a more efficient medium there.  But lately when I think about sitting\ndown to write, the photos I shot on our recent trip to Jerusalem and on visits\nto two different regions of Georgia are a goad, a gauntlet I must run before\nanother weekend comes along, producing a fresh batch of images that demand to\nbe downloaded, edited, captioned, explicated.  Meanwhile, what becomes of the writing voice I promised myself\nto develop by recording and reflecting on all the strange and wonderful\nexperiences of being at home in Georgia? \nDoes the voice become a voice-over, a mere adjunct to the images?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, one reason for the great boxful of bad photos is that I\u2019ve always thought I should be able to make good ones.\u00a0 I consider myself to be visually oriented, possessing an innate awareness of composition, color, light and shadow, as well as the odd or intriguing sights that attract a consciously open eye.\u00a0 So it has been a disappointment, time after time, to open an envelope of freshly developed film and find that I failed once again to capture what I saw through the view finder.\u00a0 Frustration with my inability to produce compelling, telling images led me to abandon the camera altogether for many years.\u00a0 I said I didn\u2019t like taking photos because it meant stepping outside the immediate experience of new surroundings, but I resented equally the disparity between the fascinating sights I had seen in three dimensions and the unsatisfactory, two-dimensional images I produced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What a happy surprise, then, to find that I\ncan make decent photographs!  \n(And thank you, digital photography, for the ability to shoot multiple\nviews and choose the best one to represent my experience.)  Dilemma resolved, right?  Embrace a new medium and make a happy\nmarriage of the two\u2014words and pictures!  Still, something about it doesn\u2019t sit right with me.  I think it has to do with the way I\nthink about writing, what I expect from it and from myself as a writer.  I aspire to communicate precisely and\nviscerally, to choose so exactly the right words that readers will share my\nexperience, even recognize it as their own.  Given those parameters, photographic accompaniment seems\nlike a cheat, a short-cut through the proverbial thousand words.  Hence my judgement that words in need\nof pictures must not be very effective or well-chosen.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which brings me back, 700 words later, to\nthe question that launched this soliloquy: do I write to reflect on my\nexperiences and observations or to represent the photos I make?  Ideally I\u2019d prefer to illustrate this\nexpat life in words alone, but would I deny the pleasure of employing a visual\nmedium\u2014especially one I\u2019ve coveted\u2014out of some stubborn notion about purity of\nexpression?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you have stuck with me through this\nargument with myself I thank you, and close with one photo, perhaps worth more\nthan all these words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I don\u2019t suppose it\u2019s entirely an either\/or situation, or that the two are mutually exclusive, but lately it seems I write more to elucidate the photographs I shoot than to meditate on life here on the other side of the world.\u00a0 This comes as something of a surprise to me, as I\u2019ve never been a
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