Slow Photography: between the Image and the Word

Section: Theory of Journalism and Media

The article examines the current phenomenon of ‘slow photography’ as a form of ‘slow culture’, which is currently in great demand in the media. Two approaches to the creation of ‘slow photography’ are considered: reconstructive and creative ones. The article interprets the works of the 20th–21st century photographers who use literary writing and drawing over photography: François-Marie Banier, Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, Igor Klepnev. The author analyzes linear and nonlinear relationships of multidimensional photographic text, whose density reaches maximum concentration when using codes of several sign systems, which complicates and slows down the process of creating and decoding such a text for the reader/viewer. The relationship between the categories of space and time in photo text is studied (in particular, the issue of ‘pseudo-time’ and spatial ‘gap’; the categories of being still and lasting). The article also presents the value paradigm of meanings embedded in the photo stories and photo drawings (in particular, the problem of cultivating memory and ‘getting out of memory’). As a result, the place of ‘slow photography’ in the modern media space is defined as the threshold one – between literature and painting, and also as the intermediate one – between the documentary and the artistic.

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