Photo by Dennis Dunleavy (1995)
What makes some images more emotionally appealing and persuasive than others?
One way of understanding how images evoke feelings is by understanding the concept of intimacy. Intimate images create a feelings of being, closeness, and belonging.
Although we commonly associate intimacy with person-to-person relationships, the connections we make with an object, such as a photograph, may have produce similar feelings.
Joe Elbert, picture editor for the Washington Post, once categorized pictures as ranging from "informational" at the lowest end of the scale to "intimate" at the highest. But Elbert doesn't elaborate conclusively on the exact definition of an "intimate" image. "I can't give you a description of an intimate picture; it's something that can be felt," Elbert notes.
What this suggests is viewing, as a highly selective and potentially emotional process, connects the ways of seeing with ways of making things seen though meaning and interpretation.
Viewing assumes people apply perceptual filters to thing seen. This also suggests a state of consciousness. A perceptual filter refers to how personal perceptions and judgments bias our understanding of what we see. In writing about self-esteem and recovery, James Henman contends:
We experience the world through filters that have a profound effect on how we feel. These filters are made up of our underlying assumptions and beliefs about reality, our attitudes toward ourselves and others, our past experiences, our current expectations and how we process all of this information.
The perceptual filters we use to interpret an image may also be deeply connected to the store of memories we call upon when seeing. In the process of viewing, memories and experiences are recalled and compared to the new object. Ultimately, an intimate image breaks through the barriers of personal prejudice, and judgment by connecting to memories or universal feelings we hold inside ourselves.
Photo by Karla Gachet
Psychologist Joel Bennett observes, "A relationship has meaning when seen and lived in a broader temporal context."
What Bennett suggests here is that people experience time multi-dimensionally through the past, presence, and future. The feelings of intimacy evoked in an image, then, help to provide a broader context in which we experience life. In this way, the photographer is challenged to create pictures that resonate on a higher level -- one that connects with a viewer's needs and desires beyond a informational context.
What technical, compositional, and content considerations are needed for understanding how intimate images are created?
Photo by Dennis Dunleavy (2004)
First and foremost, the intensity and direction of light becomes a dynamic factor in evoking feelings in an image. Softer and indirect light may evoke empathy in viewing an image. When we are drawn into a frame through the use of softer more painterly tones, the possibility of creating stronger connections with the needs, feelings, problems, and views of others emerges. This does not mean, however, that is not possible to have intimate images with hard and direct light, but the difference may be more the equivalent of a whisper over a shout or scream.
Ultimately, the relationship between the subject and the light captured in a frame becomes increasingly more critical in the ability to produce empathic and intimate images.