Double Take

I’m intrigued by double exposures. I’ve written about Daniella Zalcman’s very moving work with indigenous Canadians here. I really like her fascinating double-exposure approach to this project, and there’s a reason why (beyond the fact that its excellent!).

I first became aware of the power such images could have over 20 years ago. A friend Anne asked me to process a roll of b&w film for her. She admitted that she felt stupid, that she’d left it in the camera and rewound it, then managed to respool it and expose it a second time. She was convinced it was a waste of time getting it developed, that it would be ruined, but said if I didn’t mind doing it for her she’d be grateful.

I agreed to do it, and offered to let her come and be involved so she could share the excitement of seeing the contact sheet appear in the tray, and she jumped at the chance. So the two of us processed and watched. The contact sheet was ‘interesting’ and a lot of images were jumbles of stuff that made little sense. But to our great surprise many frames had perfectly aligned and looked very very  promising.

We picked a few and made 10×8 prints. Anne was astonished, and she was also emotional. She seemed really surprised and moved by the result and she ended up staying a while and discussing the significance of what she was ‘reading’ in the images. Her relationship with her partner Brian. was falling apart, messily, but they’d had two trips away to try and reconcile differences, and it was these two trips that had been recorded on the film, and overlaid. One trip was just the two of them, and it had ended badly; the other was to her parents wedding anniversary party, an event full of expectations her parents had about Anne and Brian’s relationship, and a whole lot of other family stuff that was somewhat traumatic, but concealed beneath ‘the brave faces’  that each wore for the party.

The image is intriguing. One exposure is horizontal, her parents celebrating the anniversary, glasses in hand to the left of the frame. The second exposure is vertical, of her partner Brian on the left of the frame also, his long hair ‘pouring’ out of the champagne glass Anne’s mother is holding, but his face ‘draped’ by Anne’s mother’s blouse, his forehead becoming her right shoulder. The guitar-like frets & strings behind is actually a fence Brian was leaning on, the apparent soundbox of the guitar these ‘not-frets’ are attached to is actually the back of the sofa that Anne’s parents are sitting on. What could be the sound-hole of the guitar is Brian’s bearded chin. Brian actually plays guitar but there was no real guitar in this image, only this strange shape-shifting guitar-ghost that had resulted from this amalgam of fence and sofa.

Anne was profoundly moved by all of this. Layer upon layer of relevance to her life was being revealed to me as she described the symbolism of all that was in this image, parental expectation, the fence a metaphor for a barrier, and much much more than I can repeat here. She was deeply moved and affected by what she could see in this strange image, and the emotions it drew from her were many and complex. The experience of witnessing this significantly moved me too.

After Anne left I needed a whisky. And I sat thinking about what had just occurred long into the wee hours.

That image, and the story it elicited, has stayed with me for twenty years. Literally. It is framed, on my office wall, right in front of me as I type. To remind me, that life is complicated, and that sometimes images can reveal far more about us than we imagined. It also made me aware of the strange alchemy that can result from a double exposure – its significance existing not entirely in either original image, but in some netherspace where the emotions elicited from one commingle with the other, and can hit you, hard and unexpectedly.

And all of this….is to lead you into going to Blink and reading an excellent article by Daniella Zalcman – The Impact of Double Exposure Photojournalism.

Many of the post-photographic pundits would have you believe the golden age of image-making is over, but this article should leave you in no doubt that we’re only just scratching the surface of its potential to communicate and, in some cases, provoke change.

Laurence: Be it with double exposure, fiction, or pedagogical tools, you break the constraints of reportage. Can you comment on the innovation and experimentation in photography for better storytelling?

Daniella: Right now, we are redefining the meaning of photojournalism and reportage. It’s funny how the World Press comes out with new stringent guidelines every year while I see more innovation and experimentation in photography. Is my double exposure work reportage? Maybe not. Is it journalism? I think so. I’m not going to argue my case for whether or not I should be able to submit to photojournalism awards. More and more people are agreeing with me and are expanding the definition of reportage. Anastasia Taylor-Lind is currently working on a project where she sends a postcard from Donetsk, with the names of the people who fought and died in the war there. That’s not photojournalism at all, but its storytelling, and it’s incredibly powerful. Our vision is getting much broader and more exciting. I’m happy to be working on the end of the spectrum.