Photography as Intrigue

Photography is debatably the first of the new visual arts media. As an art form it is inexplicably linked to the advent of modernity, and as such embodies a distinct sense, and interpretation, of reality. Photography is both void of perspective, and entirely perspective based. Part of what makes photography such an effective tool of propagandists is the inherent realism of the medium. No matter the subject's bias, this momentary snapshot tells a powerful story. But is it an accurate one?

In June of 2011 a series of riots broke out in Vancouver, Canada. As photos of police clashing with rioters flooded the news, one photo gained traction across the world. It instantly was dubbed The Vancouver Kiss.

The Vancouver Kiss

This iconic image embodied the notion of 'Make Love not War' and presented the consumer with a stunning alternative to the carnage in the foreground and background.
But the truth is a little more confusing. A second photo, moments later from a different vantage point tells an entirely different story.

Moments Later

The chronology of the event is quite different from the initial snapshot. Later investigative journalism confirmed the women had been knocked to the ground, and her boyfriend was desperately trying to keep her conscience.


Years earlier, a photo of General Nguyen Loan executing a vietcong prisoner on the streets of Saigon flooded newspapers and magazines. This truly iconic photo shows an execution in progress.

1968 Saigon

The look of terror on the man's face is human, as is the strong arm of the gun, the grinning face of the uniformed solder, and the faceless executioner. This photo is considered to be seminal in the US Withdrawal from Vietnam.
Yet the history behind this image is anything but clear cut. It was later confimred by US journalists that the executed, Nguyen Van Lem, had previously murdered one of General Loan's senior officers, along with the officer's entire family. The executed, Lem, was by all definitions a war criminal. Moral judgements remain about General Loan's summery execution, but the complete story is one quite different than the photo alone shows.

It is for this reason precisely that photography is a poor medium of storytelling. No matter how complex the image, or how carefully composed, interpretation, and the blindness of a snapshot without context always looms heavy over the image. As a photographer myself I have deep respect and admiration for photographic journalists and artistic photographers. Yet I do strongly believe complex narrative is a tool best left to film, and the written word.

Immediacy, Hypermediacy, and Remediation

The concepts of Immediacy, Hypermediacy, and Remediation is considered a canon of modern storytelling, as well a media for the digital age. Classically, these three principles work as semi-exclusive criteria for describing new and interdisciplinary media.

• Immediacy is the concept of media able to transcend the bounds of its medium, based off the lack of media perception. While (debatably) unobtainable, immediacy lends itself to the realism seem in computer generated imagery for cinema, photography, and soundscape audio. 
• Hypermediacy is the undeniable presence of media in storytelling and consumptive process. The audience is unable to experience immediacy in the hypermediated setting
• Remediation is the process of one media approximating another, either through hypermediacy, immediacy or some other process. 

These three terms are assumed to be inversely related, the more immediacy is conformed to, the less hyermediate it is considered. Remediation can be a product of either hypermediacy or immediacy, depending on its implementation. 

Yet how does this relate to an exceedingly mediated situations, that are also perceived as hyper-real? The concept of interdisciplinary experiential performance art is not new, but its prescience in the mainstream art culture has just emerged. 

This genera is most closely explained by a 1919 essay, The Uncanny, and a 1938 manuscript, The Theater and its Double. The Uncanny is "the opposite of the familiar",  a hyper-real state created by the juxtaposition of seemingly incompatible identities. The Theater and its Double focuses on the visceral nature of theater as a transcendental spoken-acted medium. These two concepts work to create a state of perception more real than the standard, conceptual, human experience. 

Then She Fell using a two-way mirror 

Yet these projects rely on the intense presence of media. They do not seek to emulate real-life, but instead to create an encompassing reality distinct from our own. One could claim the presence of hypermediated reality, as the world becomes inexplicably linked to its medium of presentation. Yet this would be inaccurate, as from the audience's perspective the illusion instantly overpowers the media.

Sleep No More, audience in white masks

Many have compared this form of theater to alternate reality games, yet it exists as something distinctly different, and something currently unnamed.