The power of good visual communication is that it makes us stop and think. It gives us a moment of calm clarity in an otherwise clattering world.
The beauty of good visual communication is that even if only for a split second, you realise you've jumped outside linear time and connected with something clear and true – you've become completely absorbed. We've all listened to pieces of music and didn't notice time pass, or watched films and wondered how that took as long as it did – losing time, lost in thought, captivated by a narrative.
"You were given a fraction of a second of a world in balance.
But then it is gone."
This print from Magnum photographer John Vink is special to me, and does just that. Received as a gift and shown here with the labels of its busy voyage from New York, it speaks lyrically, and is also a reminder of my time working at Magnum and many conversations with the brilliant photographers I met about capturing the fleeting, decisive moment – Cartier-Bresson’s famous approach.
The first time I saw it, it spoke to something in me longing for that ‘fraction of a second’ – a Cambodian rice farmer in calm, reflective hand-on-hip poise at the end of his working day, the glossy water with intense and detailed blacks (always a place to lose yourself in thought), leafy patterns in balanced (pleasing) geometry, and still water surface freezing everything solid for a split second.
It is an encounter echoed in Frank O’Hara’s poem ‘Having a Coke With You’, where he rather magically describes standing in front of someone he loves and it becoming ‘statuary’—the art or practice of making statues—and everything else, including all the great works of art he has previously been captivated by, loses meaning and potency in that moment.
There is a caption written by Vink on the back of this tiny print, about his momentary 'world in balance', which he describes as being presented perfectly and caught with urgency on film before his boat drifted past for good, down the river. A split second of poise while everything else constantly rockets past in the fast river’s flow; all plans that can't be figured out just now.
No wonder this image, and O’Hara’s poem, speak up.
Good visual communication gives us a moment of calm clarity in an otherwise clattering world.
Images like this are unusual for a Magnum observation. As Vink says, normally the photographer is still and waits for the scene to coalesce into the ‘decisive moment’, then shoots. This time it was reversed – the scene was perfectly still and he was the one moving past. Its stillness captivated him. This complete body of work on Cambodian rice farmers is so frenetic, no wonder a moment of stillness at the end of the day reached in with such a deep anchor point. From in the middle of his own storm of life on the restless photographer’s tour, he caught the feeling of momentary balance, and passed it on to us.
A perfect equilibrium when all the noise is hushed and you can hear yourself think, even fractionally, before the world goes crashing on again.
The other feature of a brilliant documentary image is that it is like a film still – you often have a really strong sense of narrative, of what came before and what may come after. Good visual communication works like that for us.
It provides perfect equilibrium when all the noise is hushed and you can hear yourself think, even fractionally, before the world goes crashing on again.
These are the precious moments, to be captured.
These are the moments to pause and notice – a world in balance.
{Today’s Soundtrack: New Jackson – Having A Coke With You}