Dissonance in Photographs?
In the world of music, dissonance is something that is learned at an advanced stage in the development of any musician whether they are simply learning to play or while writing their own compositions. Consider that during the early stages of musical development, most musicians learn to play (and also write) very simple melodies. Structures are uncomplicated and the use of chords as an expression is perhaps somewhat limited. Over time, as they develop, they delve into more complex musical structures and eventually begin to incorporate chords and complex overtones that have feelings of tension and expectation to them. This is known in musical terms as ‘dissonance’.
Yesterday I had a very nice conversation with a musical friend of mine about this very topic. Since the conversation, I’ve been considering if there is a parallel to ‘dissonance’ in photographic images. I’m certainly aware that we can have dissonance in photographs, but I’m not altogether clear if dissonance is a good thing in images. Is it possible to have an image that creates tension, but at the same time be pleasing to our eye?
I also think that it’s not possible to use musical development as a similar analogy to that of image making, as they both appear to be opposite from each other. In music, simple compositions or melodies are often encountered early on in our musical tastes and development, while more complex forms of music are often acquired over a long period of time while we learn to enjoy their depth and meaning. With photographic images, we often start with very busy, complex scenes, because we haven’t developed our eye to remove all the distracting elements contained within the frame. It is only over many years that we become able to refine our compositional eye and notice things that need to be removed.
This has been my assumption until yesterdays conversation with my music friend. I’m now unsure if my idea that imagery should be simple, is a correct one. Certainly for many people who wish to improve their photography, gaining a more selective eye is a good thing. But what if you do want to create images that have a degree of tension in them? Surely it is ok for an image to be overly complex, to have a dissonance to it – if this is what you intended?
I think there is a difference between dissonance in an image, and a bad composition. For me, dissonance implies that the work is good, while containing a degree of tension in it. Bad compositions are often bad photographs because the composition creates a form of tension that is displeasing to the viewer’s eye.
I’d like to hear your views, and maybe you can point me towards work where you feel there is dissonance (read tension) while at the same time, the work is superb. I’d love to hear from you.
postnote: I deliberately used the two images of Raudfoss in Iceland in this posting, because I feel there is perhaps more tension in the first image due to the more fractured foreground landscape. The second image has a less fractious foreground, with more space and is perhaps therefore calmer than the first. But there is still a degree of complexity to both of them, and I’m wondering if this is dissonance, of a sort? The images aren’t bad, in fact, I’m very pleased with them, but there is certainly a complex overtone to both of them. How else may dissonance be conveyed in an image? A dramatic thunderous sky perhaps can convey drama, but does it convey tension? Do you feel on edge when looking at pictures of storms?
To start off answering your question: I can definitely feel on edge when looking at a picture of a storm. It is my personal experience of having been in storms that gets a small wake-up call there and then. And it is an experience of the dramatic type.
The same goes for looking at a picture of a summer-pasture or something else ‘relaxing’: it creates a feeling in me that could be the equivalent of tension, but of the pleasurable kind. So I guess what I am trying to say is, that ‘something’ in me gets stirred and that’s what creates tension. Not necessarily negative at all. I think this is what makes us creative as human beings.
Your post also made me think of something else: for us to react to dissonance, we need to have some sort of basic framework to compare it with. There has to be a ‘sonance’ for there to be able to be a dis-sonance.
When that frame or underlying structure or whatever you’d like to call it, is lacking or badly made, we experience a form of chaos. It just doesn’t make sense to us…
I googled ‘chaos’ just now and the images coming up there were not chaotic at all! There is a unifying ‘something’ in all of the pictures there. And therefore I didn’t experience them as being chaotic :)
In a bad composition however, the unifying ‘something’ (someone come up with a good word please?) is lacking in quality and the whole piece is therefore out of proportion/ unbalanced/ doesn’t make as much sense as it could have.
Or, to put differently: it doesn’t create the right kind of tension for us to be able to understand the message the creator intended.
L
Comment by liliand — 13 March, 2013 @ 11:45 am
interesting though. I was ‘brought up with the ‘theory of cognitive dissonance’ …. check Wiki on this is interested. it has a different turn from music
e.g. ‘ Important research generated by the theory has been concerned with the consequences of exposure to information inconsistent with a prior belief, ‘
your post led me to look at some of my recent shots that i liked but maybe that others did not ‘see’ what appealed to me. Tor example one I put on my FB page has the river Don almost black looking. Most of my friends expect ‘blue’ but the black deepness of the river is what made the shot for me.
Regards, Robert
Comment by IMSphotos — 13 March, 2013 @ 11:54 am
This has the potential for a rather complex discussion, Bruce! That not least since dissonance has quite notably different meanings in different fields, as alluded to by the previous two comments. Taking an arbitrary (well, fairly arbitrary) middle ground, where dissonance in photographs could be taken to mean ‘having some conflict or tension’, as you have, then considering the two images above …
It seems to me that there is more dissonance in the *second* image than in the first. In the first, whilst the area of the falls and the area of the fractured land are markedly different, they’re both complex in terms of texture and shapes. In the second image, however, the falls area at the top, is wildly different from the milky, flowing water; more dissonant, at least to my eye.
To me that makes the first image more conventionally balanced (it has a similar overall ‘feel’ to the top and bottom halves), but the second image more dynamic, since there is a sudden shift from falling, textured water to flowing, smooth water.
If the concept of dissonance is useful in describing an image – and I think it probably is – then it seems most effective in the second shot: the shift says something about water states via the dissonance portrayed. (That’s not a comment on which of the two I prefer, however!).
Just some initial thoughts; as I said, I think this is quite a complex discussion!
Mike
Comment by MikeDGreen — 13 March, 2013 @ 1:23 pm
Hi Bruce, “Is it possible to have an image that creates tension, but at the same time be pleasing to our eye?” Yes, I think absolutely it is.
Perhaps it takes a more trained, or more sophisticated eye to find such a photograph pleasing.
I have always enjoyed the colour work of Ernst Haas. His work, and in fact a number of the pioneers of colour art photography have a tension to their work. Colour in particular can add to this tension. There is a depth and complexity to their work which many people might find complex and busy. Yet I enjoy this complexity. I enjoy being taken to a place of visual tension yet still held firm by a photograph which still feels just right. I find it rich and engaging and very pleasing.
Of course “pleasing” can be very personal and subjective. Equally so for the cause of any tension.
I found much of the work of Pete Turner very confronting when I first journeyed into photography. In Pete’s work I found simplicity and yet I also found complexity and tension.
Because my own journey into photography is still relatively new, I do try not to limit or judge the work of others. Every day I am being challenged and my eyes are being opened. It is for this reason I am intently curious about all things photographic.
Thank you for a wonderful post.
Cheers, Steve
Comment by Steve Coleman — 13 March, 2013 @ 2:13 pm
Hello Bruce, I’ve been reading your blog for a while, but this is my first post.
My initial thoughts are that dissonance, in any art form, is never complete. I’m not sure we humans are attracted to or find interesting, absolute dissonance. We only find it captivating in small doses or as part of an overall more harmonious and agreeable context or structure.
Both images above, are to me, are visually ‘balanced’. Any disssonace is part of the larger context. In the first image, one expects water to be flowing in the lower half. We see, instead, dry, cracked ground. This is perhaps the dissonance. The cracked earth, however, has a rather similar pattern to the falling water and so the dissonance serves to bring about a sort of harmony.
This post really has me thinking (your posts usually do).
Thanks,
Eric
Comment by EdubP — 13 March, 2013 @ 7:30 pm
Hi Mike,
Thanks for the posting and upon reading your comments about the two images, I can see what you mean. Yes, the second image displays more ‘dissonance’ because the bottom is quite different from the top, whereas with the first image, the entire frame is busy. As we’ve discussed in previous workshops, having a consistently busy frame can lead to simplicity or an ‘easy to digest’ image, because there is less room for sudden change.
Hi Steve,
Yes, ‘pleasing’ can be a very personal and subjective thing. I entirely agree. I do feel at times as if I have very rigid views of what is good / bad in a photograph, and I think this comes back to having a strong sense of visual style. If you know what you like: you tend to have strong beliefs surrounding it. But I think the point of an artist should be to be as open as possible to new possibilities. Style could easily be replaced with ‘stuck in one rut’, and certainly the discussion we’re having here has opened my eyes to realising that although I have been going down a path of reduction in my images, which I feel has made them simpler, there is also an art to making very complex images work too. I completely agree that there is room for images that have ‘dissonance’ in them, and still work very much.
Hi Lilian,
Yes, I like the idea of sonance (is this a real word Lilian?), that there has to be a ying, for there to be a yang, I think is what I am reading in your comment. I love the idea that in musical terms, dissonance is a powerful tool and if present in an image, should be a powerful tool there too.
Hi Robert,
You touched upon cognitive dissonance. In the context of images, I see that as expecting to see one thing, but finding yourself being presented with another. I’ve had experiences of this on my own workshops where clients have shown me a composition of a location I know really well, so much to the point that I can’t see anything new there, yet their images are a very fresh interpretation of the same place. What causes the cognitive dissonance for me is that I expect to see compositions that follow what I’ve seen in the past, or compositions that don’t work. But instead I often see something that I never saw and yet it works beautifully. It’s always a shock to me to realise there is more out there in a landscape than I think I’ve explored, and other people’s images often challenge my own perception of what can be done with a place. I’ve always known that the same landscape can offer endless possibilities and that I am only able to see a small selection of compositional possibilities, but it still doesn’t take away from the surprise when I see images that contradict my own perception of a place, and yet still work.
It’s interesting that everyone has considered ‘dissonance’ in different ways. I wonder if it might be a good project to look for dissonance in the landscape and attempt to make good images with it?
Comment by Bruce Percy — 14 March, 2013 @ 9:51 am
Hi Bruce – A subject I’ve discussed with a few photographers and done a little bit of research about myself. I’m down in Dorset at the moment so can’t discuss at length but there are a couple of bits of information that might be useful. The first is that there is a new field of research world wide that has received the name “Neuroaesthetics” – it involves the analysis of the brains response to art, music, beauty, etc. One of the really interesting parts of the first bits of research I looked into was some NMR scans of people looking at art to find out what parts of the brain were activated.
They correlated the results from art that people enjoyed the most and also remember the most and it turned out that the parts of the brain that were activated whilst looking at those images are to do with problem solving. i.e. We love to ‘resolve’ an image and that resolution is key part of some of our enjoyment of art in many forms.
Now in visual art this ‘resolution’ can come from a simple “whats that I’m looking at?” to a complex balance of “consonance” and “dissonance” in an image.
So perhaps it’s not dissonance that is the key to this but the ‘resolution’ of dissonance. e.g. the ii V I turnaround and the resolution of a 13th to a Major 7th.
The other is something that David Ward talks about in his images where he will not completely clean up an image of ‘extraneous’ bits (and I’m talking about compositional inclusion/exclusion or a little bit of gardening at the scene) because David says doing so leaves the image too easily resolved. He doesn’t look for these components directly but if they play a part in the scene he doesn’t have a problem leaving them in the composition.
An example David uses is this image
http://www.into-the-light.com/photo/loch-abstract
Where many people would crop the top to simplify it but it becomes too simple then, not enough for your eye to ‘grab onto’ whilst browsing around the picture. The extra detail almost acts like traction for your eye to keep it flowing around the picture (and hence feeling more dynamic).
I also think the second image has a major dissonance in the bottom red rock and the way it stands out wheras the water in the background recesses.
This image of yours is one where I think you’ve played with the ideas of dissonance in your photography
http://www.brucepercy.co.uk/pages/Portfolios/norway/norway_05_b.html
The tension created from the proximity of the bouy to the edge of the frame which balances the mountains on the left and also the white specks in the water all ‘work’ in that they have a sense of dynamic balance but they also retain the dissonance, moving your eye around the picture and hanging on those small elements.
A good topic!
Comment by timparkin — 14 March, 2013 @ 10:15 am
Hi Tim,
David Ward has such a fascinating grasp on things and I love reading his Books. I completely agree with the points made about resolving an image. In my own language, I’ve often said that a simple image is one that is ‘easy to digest’, it causes us less friction and effort for us to take on board. At the same time, I also agree with David’s sentiments that cleaning up a composition too much, can lead the image to be ‘too easily resolved’. It’s a matter of taste where we stop the degree of ‘perfectionism’. Too much perfectionism in an image can leave it looking too manufactured, clinical or contrived in some way. I like to leave in random things that I feel do not disturb the overall message of the image. I often have people tell me they will clone things out of the frame because they notice a degree of distraction, but leaving them in does not detract from the entire message of the composition. In other words, you can overdo it, and kill the spirit of the image if it becomes too overworked.
Hey, thanks so much for the analysis of my image from Lofoten. I completely see what you mean. For me, those small elements didn’t break the scene, and by keeping them in there, allowed the image to have a degree of imperfection. It makes the scene more believable and because we’re trying to resolve them (this is a great word), I think it helps us connect more. Thanks so much for this Tim. Really good input there.
Comment by Bruce Percy — 14 March, 2013 @ 10:34 am
Just another comment on dissonance as I’m used to thinking of it. One aspect I can see very strongly in your work, we seek to make sense of the world in ways we can easily comprehend, a lot of your work challenges us to do that. the basic ‘attraction’ gets our attention. But then we have some figuring to do. I am now more aware of this due to this post and for me I see it is often working out the ‘scale’ of what’s in the image. I mean there are less of the obvious clues so my head is probably doing some subliminal calculations. Which is fine as any exercise in that department is bound to be good!
Comment by IMSphotos — 15 March, 2013 @ 2:53 pm
Hi IMSphotos,
This is very kind of you. It’s not easy for me to understand what others see in my own work. I often feel what I do is rather derivative in some ways, it’s just landscape photography, albeit perhaps with a more simplistic element to the compositions. I do like puzzles though, so it’s nice to think my images make you think a little more, but it’s never been my intention.
I wonder if dissonance is intended, considered when we make images? I don’t feel it is, it’s something subliminal to use your word there.
Comment by Bruce Percy — 15 March, 2013 @ 2:57 pm