Tiny writing outside the frame: captions in a photobook

Here’s a photograph that I took recently:

I was trying to think of a caption to write for it.

I couldn’t think of one.

But I’m procrastinating (sort of). I switch back to the other window where my mouse has been hovering over the ‘send’ icon. The email that I’ve drafted is to a photographer whose photobook I am editing. Whose photobook I am supposed to be editing. I haven’t heard from her in a few days and our deadline is looming.

The email that I’ve written is a gentle nudge. She sent me a draft of her book last week and I made some suggestions about sequencing, layout and narrative. I’m worried that my suggestions haven’t been communicated clearly. I’m also worried that my suggestions have been communicated clearly, but they’re the wrong suggestions. This is the first time I’ve edited someone else’s photobook.

I’m waiting to hear from her so that we can fine-tune the captions and begin copyediting. Over the week I started putting together a stylesheet to help with copyediting and proofreading. I buried my head in other photobooks from the library to get a better sense of how photographs in a sequence can tell a story.

I flick back to InDesign, where I have my photo placed in a document, and start to think about how captions change the way a reader/viewer understands an image. Captioning my own shots might be a useful exercise to try before working on someone else’s. It will definitely be a better thing to do than worry about whether to send an email or not.

If it was important to the story (in my hypothetical photobook) to explain what the subject of the photo is, then something like this might be appropriate:

The XYZ timber plantation in Somewheretown.

When I took this photo there were people working in the plantation. The small window in the harvester kept catching the sunlight (I was hoping to catch one of these winks of light in the exposure). I was paranoid that someone would hoon over and demand to know what I was doing pointing a camera on a tripod in their direction — is this guy an environmentalist trying to make some sort of statement?

A couple of hours after taking the shot, I met one of the workers (he was lovely). We ended up talking about Audible. It takes him three hours to drive to and from the plantation every day, so he listens to ‘heaps of historical stuff’. He also blasts it from the harvester while he’s on the job.

These details are not essential to know for this photograph to ‘work’. The people in the plantation weren’t my focus. If they were my subject then I could write:

Joe Bloggs operates the harvester. He listens to Audible as he works.

Captions can pull a reader/viewer’s attention away from an image. They insist that they describe the correct way to see the image. They can hijack a photograph’s ‘language’ and attempt to pin a meaning onto it.

For example, if I write this:

Kodak manufactured this version of the Colorsnap 35 between 1959 and 1964. I was surprised at the quality of the Anaston lens.

… the focus shifts from what is happening in the photograph — what it is of — to how it was taken and the technical qualities of the image. The subject of the photograph becomes the photograph itself.

Is this a useful exercise though? An image sequence in a book is very different to a single photo in a Medium article. I look through some photobooks. One that I keep coming back to is The pond by John Gossage. There are no captions in The pond, but there’s a strong narrative anyway. I find a great interview with Gossage where he says:

You see this picture. It passes into memory and affects how you see this picture. That’s a cumulative effect. That means that this picture all the way at the end has a very very different context for it than the ones at the start.

A story in a photobook can be built from thematic and visual connections. Captions can be used to reinforce a theme or counter it, run a parallel story, or give information about where and when each shot was taken. Or they can be removed entirely to let the photos speak for themselves. I try placing another image on the opposite page of my InDesign document to see what happens.

These two images are linked by thematic and visual elements.

I flick back to Outlook and read over the email again. It’s fine — don’t know why I’m making such a big thing about this. Our project will be stronger if we’re communicating clearly. And I hope that everything’s ok with her. I click ‘send’.

The photographer replied to my email. She apologised for the delay and explained why she hadn’t been in touch sooner. Today she sent me a PDF containing an updated draft of her photobook. She’s taken some of my suggestions! There’s still a bit of work to be done, but it feels like a weight has been lifted from my chest. It’s exciting to know that we’re moving forward with the project. I’m glad that I sent the email.