Beyond the Image: How Scent Expands Photography
My journey through the Balkans, specifically here in Montenegro, sparked an unusual but fascinating idea: combining aromagraphy with photography. Two events specifically triggered this thought. First, the “Belgrade Raw” photographers’ collective exhibition at the Sarajevo Photo Festival. Second, my unexpected encounter this morning with a heavy vehicle workshop in Podgorica. These experiences made me consider not just creating multi-sensory experiences by merging visuals with scent, but also the potential for a “scent recorder” or Scent Camera as a new product. Aromagraphy, the art of capturing, storing, and releasing scents, offers a way to create and share new forms of olfactive or multi-sensory experiences. I’ll continue to update this article as new thoughts and observations on integrating aromagraphy with photography emerge.
1. Scent and Image: Crafting an Emotional Context
The “Belgrade Raw” photographers’ collective, in collaboration with writer Jelena Nikolić, presented an exhibition titled “Not many things disgust me, a lot of things make me sad.” This exhibition featured snapshot-like images of everyday life in Belgrade — meat, protests, people — accompanied by single-sentence texts. The images themselves weren’t directly related to the texts, and together they didn’t form a linear narrative. Instead, the combination created a shared emotional system of image and text, operating on an emotional level rather than attempting to convey a specific message.
This approach suggests a similar strategy for combining images and scents to create a shared experience. Imagine everyday photographs (for example, various places in Riga, different people) paired with everyday aromas (gasoline, coffee, or even the scent of “Ariel” detergent). In such a system, the scents wouldn’t need to be directly tied to the images; rather, they would create and offer a common emotional framework. This shared emotional framework could be developed for places, cities, people, and so on. Scent is significantly more effective at conveying bodily sensations and emotions than an image, while an image excels at connecting environmental information with user experience. Our perception of scent is less precise than visual perception, contributing to its unique, evocative quality. This shared, multi-sensory experience can forge a deeper and more personal connection with the depicted content.
2. Scent and Photography for Environmental Documentation
This morning in Podgorica, I noticed a heavy vehicle workshop and stepped inside. The air was thick with the smell of engine oil. This experience was intriguing because it highlighted how people in different professions encounter specific scent environments — dentists with sterile smells, sewer cleaners with distinct odors, chimney sweeps with smoke, shop managers with the bouquet of their merchandise, and spas with relaxing aromas. It would be valuable to research and document these scent environments across various professions, especially those unfamiliar to the general public.
We could create documentary photographs supplemented by their corresponding scents. Photography could convey to the viewer what the environment is like and who works there, while the scents would communicate the physical sensation of what it feels like to work in that space. For aromagraphers, this direction offers significant opportunities to explore and preserve these unique scent landscapes, which are are becoming increasingly homogenized in urban environments due to air extractors and standardized indoor air quality.
3. Usecase: Scent Adds Invisible but Historical Context to an Image
I had a very interesting conversation with a local Bosnian woman at the Iranian Cultural Center in Sarajevo. I asked her which three scents from Bosnia she would like to record for future generations. She immediately and without hesitation replied that she would like to record the scent of lilies. She explained that their first Bosnian flag, which was not accepted by others (Serbs and Croats living in Bosnia), featured lilies because lilies are a very important cultural and historical symbol for them. This made me think it would be compelling to exhibit a photograph of the current flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but to that image, add the scent of lilies.
The image would represent the current flag, while the scent would represent the invisible historical and cultural aspect that the new state of Bosnia and Herzegovina was forced to omit from its representation due to compromise. The image presents the present, but the scent on this flag would convey its historical context.
