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Jacqui Knight

Recovering the event from the moments of, and in between

!is essay’s contribution to the theme of media archaeology and cogni-tion aims to understand some of the immaterial, unconscious processes by which a photographic image came into being by placing the image back into its temporal sequence, within the contact sheet. Typically the contact sheet is embedded and largely indistinguishable in dis-cussions about authorship from the process of editing, since it is the template around which most editing starts, usually the "rst sight of all the pictures taken on one "lm roll. Cartier Bresson considers it to be the contact sheets rather than the prints, which reveal the photographer himself, in following the sequence as it builds ‘towards the best picture’ one ‘sees the individual’ (Bresson, cited in Ward, 2008, p. 144). Rather untypically, this essay will point to an authorship that is not wholly intentional, but intuited; unconscious processes of decision-making during the event of taking the photographs. !e photographer’s deci-sions to depress the shutter is greatly swayed by a much larger network, a ‘collaboration’ of determinants, objects and subject matter.

!e object of reference for this essay is a contact sheet by Jonas Bendik-sen from 2000 showing a section of a space rocket on a farm near Russia’s main spaceport in Baikonur. Ten years after he took the photo-graphs Bendiksen is struck by how unaware he was of the signi"cance of the event that led to the single iconic photograph (image 27 in the contact sheet) he had used many times:

I hadn’t looked at the contact sheets in years, as I’d cut out my chosen frame and left the rest in an archival box I hardly ever accessed. Once I

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dug it out, I couldn’t help laughing aloud. I was shocked, but thrilled, at what it showed – a complete unawareness of the magic that was swirling around me. […] In any case here we were in a cloud of white butter#ies circling the remains of a Soyuz space rocket’s second stage, while local farm boys were gutting it for usable scrap metal. In total I shot less than half a roll of "lm. From the basic angle and composition from which I got the "nal select, I clicked the shutter three times. !at would not have happened today. (Bendiksen, 2011, p. 430)

Kristen Lubben (2011, p. 13) describes in the introductory remarks to Magnum Contact Sheets how placing a photographic image back into its context within a contact sheet invokes an instinctive sense of authen-ticity or proof:

[…] the traditional contact sheet, in its unaltered form is inseparable from the notion of proof: indeed, they are also known as ‘proof sheets’. Placing a photograph back within the #ow of time from which it was removed, the contact sheet holds out the promise of substantiation that an image is truly what it claims to be, that an event unfolded in the way the photographer claimed (Lubben, 2011, p. 13).

It is of course questionable this ‘substantiation’ provided by the context of other images within the contact sheet, perhaps we could say it pro-vides more a reassurance and less ‘evidence’ of the images’ authenticity. However, when the image is placed back within the #ow of lived time of the entire contact sheet from which it was removed — as part of a sequence of images with black intervals in between, the photographers inscriptions and margin text showing "lm stock type — all provide empirical access through formal elements and enable an extended read-ing of the individual image. !e following empirical or forensic reading of the contact sheet, reproduced here as a whole in this essay, through a media archaeological study, is intended to trace the immaterial dimen-sions — the cognitive processes of the photographer during the event; an event that includes the subject matter, apparatus, photographer, other people and objects, along with their possible mistakes and lucky coincidences that have brought the images into being.

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!e contact sheet holds the capacity to bring forth an impression of an event that is not wholly reducible to the sum of the images held within it. !e black interval strip that separates each frame shows up the ten-sions, di$erences and discontinuity between each image and generates an a$ective space where the viewer becomes an active participant in reconstructing the event as it was unfolding. !is a$ection lies in the absence, an absence only visible next to that which is present or given in an image, it is here our imagination "lls the blackout, we reconstruct the movements and decisions made by the photographer in relation to the changing position of the objects and subjects within the two im-ages either side of the black frame — if they refer to the same event sequence.

Jonas Bendiksen’s contact sheet shows thirty-eight colour images, all but three featuring the same part of a fallen spacecraft on farmland at the same location. It is clear it’s the same spacecraft from the way it has fallen and impacted the ground, the features on the front end are the same way up in every image. !e "rst twenty-four images show us the object from di$ering perspectives, which Bendiksen appears to animate through the captured movements around the spacecraft object working toward an optimum alignment in order to momentarily grasp the equi-librium of the compositional dynamics. Bresson illuminates this from "rst hand experience:

Sometimes a single event can be so rich in itself and it’s facets that it is necessary to move all around it in your search for the solution to the problem it poses – for the world is movement, and you can not be stationary in your attitude towards something that is moving. (Bresson, 1952, p. 3)

Between image 23 and 24 the discontinuity in the landscape shifts between the rural and a kind of wilderness and the di$erent objects depicted show a decision by Bendiksen to take a di$erent perspective on this subject. Such a signi"cant visual displacement tells us we’ve jumped forward in time as well as space. !is moment marks where one idea is brought to an end and another one begins.

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In everyday life we experience a continuous stream of linked images, however our incoming #ow of images is constantly interrupted quite naturally by our train of thought. Our inner dialogue has things to in-terject about the #ow of sensations, observations, memories and desires which it throws up against the present moment as it passes and simul-taneously presses upon what Cartier Bresson called the ‘decisive mo-ment’. !e notions of an individual ‘vision’, of a search for balance and harmony and the methods of achieving it are all relevant to a discussion of the fabled ‘decisive moment’. Clair (2006, p. 53 cited in Ward 2008, p. 136), describes an aspect of the photographer’s skill as being able to make predictions “in a millisecond what is about to happen next.” He can do this “because he remembers that he can predict.” !ere is an ele-ment here, of the time being opportune yet pending, held in readiness, and thus the photographer who is all action is also poised before action. !e instant being described here is one where the scene could fracture in any direction, the photographer is poised ready, already seeing the si-multaneous multiple potentials and ready to dash in any direction. !is element of the moment is of hiatus and anticipation and not of conclu-sion, that which is just before a decision is made.

In frame 24 Bendiksen has recognised this moment is already upon him, a cloud of white butter#ies #ood the scene, he receives this unfold-ing moment shooting twelve frames in what appears like close suc-cession. What does it mean for the ‘decisive moment’? He has already worked the scene but he could not have anticipated the storm of white butter#ies nor the diversion the horse takes across the road, nor the way in which other people and objects also might have responded to the moment upon them. Cognition cannot be described through intention-ality alone, it can be felt, a process of cognition that cannot be de-scribed as an intentional act, it is a resonance between a$ective objects; between objects, people, landscape, that is a thinking that is felt. !e precariousness of how some of these photographs come into existence is striking. Not only because any one of these elements or agents might not have composed itself in a way that made ‘the moment’ present itself to the photographer, or perhaps even the photographer might have re-sponded too late. In the twelve frames from 24 to 35, where the peak of

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the event seems most distilled, the black strips between frames also have a greater a$ective quality. Here these strips provoke a reader to imagine what Bendiksen almost shot, the in"nitely divisible moments in be-tween where gesture, composition and coincidence might have resulted in something even greater. Its here that the images, together with the gaps, reveal something larger than the images themselves.

Works Cited:

Bendiksen, J. (2000) ‘Satellites: Altai Territory, Russia’. In Lubben, K. (2011) Magnum Contact Sheets. London: !ames and Hudson, p. 431 [Contact Sheet]

Clair, J. (2006) Henri Cartier-Bresson: !e man, the image & the world: A retrospective. London: !ames and Hudson Ltd.

Bresson, H. (1952) !e Decisive Moment: Photography by Henri Cartier-Bresson.1st Edition. London: Simon and Schuster.

Lubben, K. (2011) Magnum Contact Sheets. London: !ames and Hud-son Ltd

Ward, K. (2008) Augenblick: !e Concept of the ‘Decisive Moment’ in 19th and 20th Century Western Philosophy. Aldershot: Ashgate Publish-ing Ltd

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Plates

Plate 1. Bendiksen, J. (2000) ‘Image 27 from Satellites: Altai Territory, Russia’. In Lubben, K. (2011) Magnum Contact Sheets. London: !ames and Hudson, p. 432 [Photograph]

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