Factual Enigma

About

Creating or consuming stories appears to be a basic human need and we devise all kinds of means by which to do so. It is therefore not surprising that both makers and viewers of photographs try to concoct or tease stories from them. Yet since stories depend on time lines, still images do not easily lend themselves to narration. It can be argued that they effectively sidestep or even thwart any such attempts on our part. The stories a photographer may wish to tell with a series of images will never quite tally with the ones the viewers might construct from them, even when there are titles to guide us. David Campany, who has spent years thinking and writing about photography, states: “Hitchcock was the master of suspense but photographs suspend in a very different way. They show but they don’t tell. They describe but they don’t explain. They are factual enigmas.”

See for yourself what stories are evoked for you and, if you can, come and compare them with those of the photographers, who will make themselves available on the afternoon of Saturday 27th April in espacio gallery.