Can you photograph emotion?

What emotion is this? 🙄


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Ned, your photos create an emotional state in me, the viewer, they do not show an emotion on their own. I like the way fog hides the distance - it makes a mystery. So these create emotion, but do not document it.
 
Can you photograph emotion?

Sure! What’s the big deal. Two by Erwitt. Two of millions. The really good ones from cats to dogs to horses to people to landscapes are THEE perfect combination of accident and readiness ... except the one of Chris, which must have required elaborate studio staging and intense facial preparation. ;•}

Bruce
 

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This is an interesting thread.

I have no doubt it is possible to take a photograph to elicit an emotional response from the viewer. I am sure that almost every photograph ever taken achieves that, even if that emotion is ambivalence.

Similarly one can take a photograph of someone laughing, crying, kissing or whistfully staring into space with a trophy in their hands to illustrate an emotion.

However, to actually capture emotion in a photograph? Surely that would be like attempting to photograph music, or the taste of a good vindaloo.
 
Avotius said:
.....Looking from picture to picture and first commenting on the feeling the image gives us but then also thinking about "did this person capture the emotion....or did we just respond with emotion to what was captured?"

What do you think? Is there a specific photo or something that when you look at it you think "that is happiness" or "that is anger" or "this is joy". Is there any work out there that when you look at this you think the person has capture the quintessential essence of emotion?

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In my opinion this is a complex question with "YES" and "NO" answers.

First of all the emotional world of the human being is very personal and very much uncounscious in its dephts. Of course that some pictures may get a consensus about the emotion they transmit.

But incidentally, and perhaps due to a misunderstanding of the many English uses of the word "happyness", I don't think the photo of Winograd depicts real happyness, deep happyness. It depicts a funny moment, not happyness.

As for the "YES and NO", we very much photograph out of our own emotions. But once the picture is printed it can get many possible interpretations, according to the viewer. The viewer's emotions, which are not equal to ours.

We definitely capture emotions, but which ones - this is an open issue.

BTW, my menthor once told me about a friend of him that when asked what do you photograph, he uses to answer: "Noise".

Cheers,
Ruben
 
MickH said:
However, to actually capture emotion in a photograph? Surely that would be like attempting to photograph music, or the taste of a good vindaloo.
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... which respectively enter the senses thru the ear and the mouth rather than the eye. Now that would be a challenge!
 
Oh my gawd, it's big foot and he's emotionally pissed!!

... had to add that dog looks more like a large spider in the thumbnail ...
 

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merlin said:
Oh my gawd, it's big foot and he's emotionally pissed!!

... had to add that dog looks more like a large spider in the thumbnail ...
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LOL! Thanks, merlin. Thanks my goofy greyhound, "Zoomer", up to his antics again!
 
Chris101 said:
It's a personal thing of course, but I am old school in that I see emotion through the human face.
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I would argue, that viewing a human face showing an emotion - allows you to empathize/sympathize, and so creates an emotional state in the viewer.

It's a different method, but the same end. Both are a document. Both rely on the viewer to interpret.

You can test this with facial expressions recognition, often used in psychology and testing - someone who doesn't recognize an expression (a toothy smile as a threatening gesture, for instance) wouldn't necessarily say it's a happy photograph. The emotion wasn't captured. An image which must be interpreted by the viewer was.


edit:
Forgive me - it seems this was already stated, more eloquently within the first few posts of the thread.
 
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In most cases (including current posts) we are shooting moments, visual reflection of emotion, but not deep of emotions. more difficult is capturing of internal world of people, emotions within peoples.
Some pictures about this point:




everything, each point of viasual attention has to work for present emotions within.
 
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